Love

Last Wednesday, I got up at an unbelievably early hour-- 5:30. But, it was for a good cause. I spent the day in Lady Lake helping with storm relief. We spent about 8 hours hauling trees from one very disorganized pile where they fell to a only slightly less disorganized pile where they waited for the county to come and haul it off to be destroyed. It was hard, backbreaking work. I was the dirtiest that I had been in a very long time. I had dirt in places that hadn't seen dirt since I was a kid-- like in my ears and between my toes. We helped a lady named Cathy clear out the pasture where she keeps her ponies and to clear the area where her chickens roam, and we did a primitive fix on the fence line. She couldn't seem to thank us enough.

Neither could the second house we went to. They raise birds--parakeets and parrots, I think. We picked up trash inthe yard and they guys put tarps on the roof. We the other crew got there we started cutting up trees again, so they could be burned off. This couple was just completely overwhelmed. They tried to pay us in some way. He ended up giving some of us leather gloves to continue on in our relief efforts.

The truth is they paid us. The community paid us by fixing us lunch at a local church. They paid us by allowing us to come and help them. They paid us by allowing us to be the Body of the Church and doing what God commanded us to do. The price of the sore backs and arms and blisters on toes were completely worth it, though. Especially when we heard that an elderly couple we had been working with gave up their vacation to come help with the clean up. Or, when we heard that the Chainsaw guy-- a blacksmith who had driven down from Minnesota to sharpen the relief efforts chainsaws-- led one of the homeowners to Christ!

It sounds cheesy, but I've been thinking about it all week. This is what we, as Christ-followers, are commanded to do. It felt good to do something for someone else, and to push myself out of my comfort zone for a day. In a song on his new C.D., John Mayer has a line where he says that one day the love he's given will be returned to him. I hope that we helped do that for someone on that day.