Manure Moments

After my nightmare earlier this month, I decided to choose a verse that had to do with fear to meditate on this month. I chose 1 John 4:18-19. 

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us.”

I try to keep remembering that. There is no fear in love. I know that God loves me so I don’t have to fear what’s coming in the future. That’s so much easier said than done. 

I was listening to the podcast That Sounds Fun, and Tim Timmons was the guest a few episodes ago. Side note on him is that he’s from the area where I grew up. He came and led worship at the school where I taught at least once if not a few times. I think I also saw him in concert a few times with some other favorite singers in our area before they all got more famous. When I first saw him, he was at the beginning of his cancer journey then, and he’s still going strong years later. 

There were a lot of things he said that stuck out to me. I for sure did not catch them all to write them down. One that he said was to practice trust and not worry.  Either one is  a practice. That means it’s active. It’s a habit, something that we do. That makes it in my control. Will I choose to dwell on fear or choose to practice trust? We can either rile ourselves up with fears and doubts, or we can trust that God knows what he’s doing. 

Another point he made was that attention equals worship. What we give our attention to is what we’re celebrating and adoring. Am I adoring experiences, food, TV, books, and friends rather than giving my adoration to God? 

As he talked about his cancer journey he mentioned that every day he wakes up aware of the fact that he has another day. He didn’t necessarily think like that pre-cancer. Now he doesn’t take days for granted as much. He said, “I would never have that perspective if I didn’t have manure.” We all have manure, things that stink about our lives. We can choose whether to just complain about the stink or realize that the manure, thought smelly, is performing an important task. 

At my last school, we had Open House night each year in the spring. We got things looking nice and had things touched up before the big day. One year, someone wasn’t thinking strategically because they put manure out in the flower beds on the day of Open House. The plants looked great, but it stunk so bad all night. Many people made comments about it. No one said how pretty the flowers looked though. We were all focused on the bad smell but not on its purpose.

There are many tough situations in life. It’s easy to recognize them by their “smells” and focus on that. But manure’s purpose is to promote growth in the plants it encounters. In the same way, the tough stuff in our life is there to promote our growth, if we let it.

There have for sure been some manure moments in the last week, but I can also see some growth that they have caused. Similarly, it would have been easy for Tim to focus on the stink of the manure of cancer that he was dealing with, but he has chosen to look for the growth. I’m encouraged that in my story and in the stories of others, those manure seasons bring growth. We get that growth by looking to God and seeing what he’s doing in and around us. We give him our attention, our trust, and our love.

What’s your manure and how does it help you grow?