Lawn Maintenance vs. Life Maintenance (or "Why Moses Was Kind of an Idiot")

Ah.  The birds are chirping.  The trees are blooming.  The squirrels have resumed running out into the road.

And the grass is growing.

That's right, what many of you have feared seeing, the grass is growing once more.  Our perennial friend, the green green grass of home, has again started poking it's little verdigris head out of the ground, and it is our job to once a week decapitate the little punks.  And we do it with gusto.  Because we can.  I choose to do it with a John Deere 720 Z Zero-Turn hunk of a lawn tractor (or as I call, "The Pod Racer" as to how similar it is in design to the pod racers of "Phantom Menace" fame/infamy).

Well last week I was out on the Pod Racer cutting the grass when this idea occurred to me.  It went something like this: "You know, I used to hate cutting the grass.  Now, I kinda look forward to getting out here on the Pod Racer.  And I take pride in cutting this grass.  That seems really grown up of me."  It was something like that, except probably less formal and more blurb-esque.

But its true!  I used to absolutely despise cutting the grass.  I would take Dylan Thomas' sagacious advice and rage, rage against the machine (haha) that was the lawnmower.  But I would do it.  Now, ever since I've graduated to the big-boy toy and get to use the riding mower, I've calmed down a bit.  And, as I said earlier, I have even learned to take pride in cutting the grass.  When I finish the job, I look out on it and say, "My, that looks good.  I should do this professionally," and then I kick myself for ever thinking such a fool-hardy thought.

But right now, if you're a regular reader here (in which case I should say hi, two of you), you're asking yourself and me the obvious question.  "Where's the metaphor, Adam?  Where's the brilliant insight you gained from having this mystical thought whilst killing grass?"  And, if you're at least half astute, you'll have noticed what I said in the title.  But if not, here it goes.

When I thought about this transition in my life, this change from the immense hatred I felt for cutting the grass to the newfound joy I have in seeing a lawn well mowed, it occurred to me.  We do that with our lives.  A lot.  When we're kids, we have these grand dreams of what we will accomplish one day and what we can be.  We dream of being astronauts and we dream of being Presidents.  Or someone truly great, like a writer.  We dream of the grand things we will achieve in this world, and we envision the day that this world shivers when it sees us coming, because it knows that something powerful is about to happen.

Then, time goes by, and life falls a little short of our expectations, so we bide our time doing something else.  We bide our time as accountants or lay-people.  Or we take jobs that are not exactly what we envisioned ourselves doing.  We say it will just be a temporary thing until we get our life on the road, or until our ship comes in, which is odd because those are two completely different forms of transportation employed in that there metaphor.

And do we ever break free from the temporary confines of average citizenry?  No.  We find comfort there, and we learn to take pride in our work done.  We start performing life maintenance.  Now I get it, people grow, their dreams change, and they gain responsibilities.  They have to do certain things.  But I have to wonder.  In what order does that happen?  Do our dreams change, leading us to step down out of the batter's box and into the score keeper's booth, or do we accept our place and try to fit our goals to match it?

Now speaking of the title, let me bring up a little fellow named Moses.  Some of you, especially those of you who may have been in my Bible Study groups in the past, are probably familiar with my love for Exodus Ch. 3 and the story of the Burning Bush and God speaking to Moses through it.  Here, we move one chapter to the right and look at Exodus Ch. 4.  This past Wednesday night at "The Loft," Hebron's College and Twenty-Somethings ministry, our college pastor (there's that shout-out you wanted, Rando!) talked a little about this chapter and the lunacy of Moses' response to God.  Let's take a look.

Here is Moses talking to God I AM through flaming shrubbery.  If that alone wasn't awesome enough, God had already told Moses that he was standing on Holy Ground, turned the staff in his hand into a snake, then almost simultaneously struck Moses with leprosy and instantly cured it.  So Moses had seen the Power of God at work before his eyes, as potent and obvious as I'm sure the putrid presence of sheep smell was on Moses' cloak.  Yet look at what he says:

Exodus 4:10-13

But Moses pleaded with the Lord, "O Lord, I'm not very good with words.  I never have been, and I'm not now, even though you have spoken to me.  I get tongue-tied, and my words get tangled."  

11 Then the Lord asked moses, "Who makes a person's mouth?  Who decides whether people speak or do not speak, hear or do not hear, see or do not see?  Is it not I, the Lord?   12 Now go!  I will be with you as you speak, and I will instruct you in what to say."  

13 But Moses again pleaded, "Lord, please!  Send anyone else."

So let me get this straight.  The Voice of God had just literally and audibly (and I guess pyroverbally?) spoken to Moses and told him of the great thing he would do.  There was no question.  God had told Moses exactly what He was going to do through him and how, even going so far as to provide him with miraculous signs to show the people.  And what does Moses do?  He asks God to "Send anyone else."  Moses has spent the last four decades herding sheep up in the mountainous deserts, and he is not interested in taking on this great and wonderful task that God has asked him to do.  He has gotten so comfortable in just maintaining this life that he is not willing to step out and follow the call that God has placed on his life.

And I think we do that all the time.  As Rando said, God has called all of us to do great things.  Have you ever heard the saying, "What would you strive to do if you knew you could not fail?"  When we are acting in accordance with the will of God, moving as He has called us to do, we cannot fail.  And we will not fail.  We will not fail because the God of the universe has willed our actions to success.  God will not call us to do something that we will fail at, because He is calling us to succeed.  He is calling us to fulfill his plans, so why would He want us to fail?  If you still need convincing, look what happened when Moses stepped out and followed God's call.  He lead the people of Israel out of bondage, slavery that they had been kept in for over four-hundred years.  He was the toast of the town (until they got stuck at the river banks and the people doubted him and God again, but that's another story) and he was the heralded man of God.  Heck, we're still talking about him today.  All because he eventually was willing to follow the call that God had placed on him.

So what does this look like for us?  We're not all bound to be famous.  Surely not.  We are not all bound to be great statesmen or voices of healing to the masses.  Some of us will be, yes, and if that is your dream, and if that is the dream to which God is leading you, then my stars, go out and do it.  But if not, what should you do?

The simple answer is that you should seek God's call, and you should seek your heart out for it.  But the more complex answer looks something like this.  I graduated from the University of Georgia with two degrees, one of them in English Education.  For a full academic year, I spent day in and day out with people who dreamed of being HS English teachers.  They knew that they had been called to teach, and they were going to work their tails off to do it.  And they were going to be the best English teachers they could be.  It was their dream. For me, however, it was not.  I won't lie, I eventually came to the point of understanding that I was in that program where I should be, but it was not God's call that I spend my life as an English teacher.  I fully believe that my calling is to write and to let my words reach people and hopefully help them.  Does that mean that my calling is better than theirs?  Or that I am more important than them because I don't plan on teaching?  No.  Those people have dreamed of this day, when they would be called teachers, and they are going to be great.  It is on them to be the best teachers they can be, and they will change lives if they do it.  I did the math, even as an English teacher.  With an average classroom size of 30 students, spending a full 30 year career teaching, you will directly reach over 10,000 students (assuming you're working in a school where you teach five periods a day, as I was at the time).  That doesn't even take into account the other random students you will see on a daily basis but never teach.  With that alone, you have already been in contact for a serious amount of time with as many people as experts say most of us will have as acquaintances in an average lifetime.

But we don't want an average lifetime.  We want a great one.  We want a life where we are reaching people and changing their lives.  We want a lifetime where we are seeing things happen that defy human experience and expectation.  That is what we are to be striving for.  Moses grew up in the seat of royalty, expecting to have influence over countless numbers of people.  In time, however, he gave that dream up for the hills of the desert where he was walking around with sheep all day.  Now I'll admit that God had brought him to this place for a reason, and that Moses was even doing his best with the task God had given him, but it was not where he was supposed to stay.  And when God called him away, Moses was about to give up his true calling to be just another sheep herder.  Do you ever wonder how many chapters of the Bible could have been written about the people God wanted to do things who flaked out on them?  Do you want to other side of Moses' coin, when you have been asked to lead the people out of Egypt?  I sure as heck don't.  I don't want to spend my life knowing that God asked me to do a great work and I instead chose to do an average one.  I am not content with just maintaining, with cutting the grass.  To borrow a quote, I want to live deeply and suck out the marrow of life, if that is what God calls me to do.  I want to soar over the rooftops of the world and sound my barbaric yawp, and do it to the best of my ability as God calls.  I ask you to join me in doing whatever it is God has called you to, and doing it the way that only you can.  With gusto, and with greatness, engage the life God has for you.  Move beyond maintenance and into majesty.

Author's Note: Adam Wynn enjoys staring out into the fog of a mountain morning and sipping warm glasses of sweet tea over hot scrambled eggs breakfast.  He also spends time writing, blogging, and cutting the grass in his Dacula, GA home.  Except for that last one, which he actually does outside of his Dacula, GA home.  He is currently unemployed and spends his time editing the Southern style mystery thriller, Will Baker is Dead, which is available in part on this website.  He also spends the time working on other short stories and looking for work as a writer, a newspaper page designer, coffee barista, or whatever someone feels like paying him to do within reason.  He also tweets and would encourage you to follow him on Twitter at @42Cobras, or you can just connect with him on Facebook  at Adam Wynn (his name, shouldn't be hard to find).  He is a huge Georgia Bulldogs fan, along with most Georgia sports teams including the Braves, Falcons, Thrashers, Gwinnett Gladiators, and the like.  Adam also enjoys answering fan mail, so please feel free to leave messages on the blog saying what you think about it.  Also, please forgive him for typing this note in third person, as it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.