Over the last 4 weeks my Pastor has been doing a series on Love which, as you can imagine, I was stoked about! The series has been absolutely wonderful and I have been so thankful to have an incredible Pastor to bring such awesome words for us each week! Anyway, over the last year I've been making an effort to love everyone around me and to bless them as much as I can. Sometimes, it's something small like writing a letter to one of my friends and leaving it under his windshield wiper on his car at school. Other times, it's something even as minute as smiling at someone as I'm passing them on the sidewalk or being really friendly to the bus driver. It really seems to make their day!
Some blessings come seasonally. Over the last few years, my sister and I did yard work for our neighbors. Be it shoveling snow or mowing the lawn, we always did it for money because we were desperate youngsters without jobs. It's funny because now that I am older I find it so much more enjoyable to surprise my neighbors by doing these tasks myself and not asking them to pay a fee. We recently got new neighbors and they were pleasantly surprised last Fall when I came over and raked all of their leaves. The kind older man actually had me come back over so that he could pay me!
Well, this year I decided that I was going to do it again and this year I raked the leaves right when the super leafy tree dropped all of its coverings. Last year I did not get to that tree's leaves before his lawn crew did so this was actually all new to me. These leaves were way bigger and WAY more in number. I was used to tiny, slimy little brown leaves that stuck to the yard and when you raked them you picked up just as much grass as you did leaves (sorry mom).0 My neighbor's leaves were big, beautiful orange, yellow and green leaves that completely coated the lawn and the sidewalks and were beginning to take over the street! I got to work and started in the least covered corner of the yard and slowly worked my way to the other side and then the sidewalk. That's when it happened. A gigantic gust of wind hit the tree and sprayed me with leaves and actually hit my head with some twigs!! I stood there kind of stunned for a second and realized that there was no way I was going to get all of the leaves in one afternoon without re-raking the same area over and over. None the less, I continued to work down the sidewalk and the side of the house where the trees were.
As I was raking I began to think of ways that this could correlate into my life. God tends to give cool insight when you ask for it. I just kind of asked God to show me something and then all these revelations just started flooding into my mind. I was kind of like "Wait, God! I have to remember all of this so that I can share it!!!" So here is what God showed me while blessing my neighbors.
Sometimes, your life is like a lawn, Your parents put the seeds into the dirt, they water it and weed it until it's a beautiful green lawn! But then the Fall comes and with it come the leaves. Some people like the leaves and some people don't. The leaves seem appealing at first because they are really pretty with the way that they cover the ground and they're a reminder of the wonderful season that Fall is. Other people really don't like the leaves because all though beautiful leaves may seem appealing, they know that when the first rain comes that the leaves are going to get all sticky and then they're going to decompose and get ugly and then coat your gorgeous lawn in brown guck that's really difficult to rake. So the people that want their lawns to be pretty and green begin to rake and rake and rake and soon they begin to see progress.
However, if you are like me and you rake your lawn during a wind storm, it can seem so pointless. Just when your lawn looks to be clean and clear of any leaves, the wind comes roaring by and brings a whole new wave of leaves!! It can seem so disheartening to see all of your hard work be ruined within ten seconds but if you think about it, it didn't all go to waste. The leaves may keep coming over and over but they won't forever. They have to stop at some point. Take a look in the yard debris bin. There's that many less leaves that you'll have to take care of tomorrow.
The same goes for our lives. Sin comes in to destroy our beautiful lives. It may seem so appealing at first but in the end it's only going to destroy God's beautiful creation. The people that don't like sin get rid of it because they know what it going to happen once the appeal of it is taken away. They work so hard to get rid of the addictions and the bad habits and just when things are looking good again, a huge temptation comes and you have to decide if you're going to give in and let that temptation ruin all of your hard work or if you are going to keep working to get it completely out of your life because, like it or not, the enemy is GOING to run out of leaves to keep throwing on your lawn and one day we'll be in heaven with the King and we'll be able to enjoy our perfect lawns with Him.
Okay, I'm glad that I was able to get all of that on this blog for you to read! After I finally finished all of the raking that I was going to do today, I walked into my house and breathed a huge sigh of relief. My mom looked at me and said "Are you getting paid?" and I replied "Nope!" She told me that God would bless me but I thought to myself... you know what? I already have been blessed! Doing all of that work for my neighbors really made ME happy and if that's all that I got out of it, I wasn't going to complain because that's really all that I wanted was to make my neighbors happy.
And I really was blessed because the whole time, I was thinking about how hungry I was and when I got inside, lunch was already made (pasta!), my mom made me some yummy orange juice and later I get to go to the movies with her and see a movie I've been so excited for!!
Well, folks, that is all that I have for you right now. I promise that I do have more posts for you later and I haven't forgotten about this blog! I love you guys so much and thanks for your input(:
Dear God, thank you so much for my pastor and his amazing sermons that he brings to us. Thank you for the inspiration to do good things for others and thank you for showing me these cool stories to share with my friends and family. I hope that you will touch the hearts of all that read this and I pray that they will be inspired to love other too! Amen.
//Brittany Danielle//
