Redemption

There are many seasons on the farm – some more picturesque and romantic than others. If asked to describe a farm, what comes to your mind?
Is it a spring scene with the fields newly planted, frolicking baby animals, and green splendor? Or do you see the culmination at harvest with the hay, fresh-mown and baled in the fields, trees laden with fruit and a lush garden with bountiful produce? Very few people picture what happens between the spring and harvest. Labor. Building, preparing, repairing. It is neither picturesque nor romantic. It is dirty and exhausting, and in the case of the task at hand – aromatic – in the worst way.

This week I stripped the barn. As the shepherd, the task falls to me. No one else will even come near. There is not one member of my family, nor a person for hire willing to lend a hand. To stand in the barn before the work begins, you would be oblivious to what lies beneath the soft, sweet-smelling straw. A few inches below the surface the litter has begun to decompose…a few inches below that, it is fully rancid. During the coldest months, the heat from the decomposition keeps the floor of the barn warm for the sheep, but in the summer, the same heat becomes unbearable. Stripping the barn removes between twelve and eighteen inches of the most pungent, putrid filth - the stench is so rank it defies description or imagination - to the cool, sweet soil beneath.

I stood leaning on the pitchfork, overwhelmed and weak from the odor. I asked God for another metaphor to distract me enough to get me through it. Something beyond the role of the Shepherd, and unconditional love, that would raise mucking manure in the sweltering July heat to a sublime meditation. God is faithful to instruct…

Why was I doing what I was doing? For the love of the sheep, to give them a reprieve from the heat, and prepare the barn for winter…No. Beyond that. Beyond the sheep, beyond the barn, beyond the stink. What am I holding? See it not for what it was – manure - or what it is – rot…but what will it be when it is finished? At this point I clearly saw the transformed and finished product – the compost heap. In the end this offensive rot becomes the harvest. There could be no harvest without it…the crop would starve. In the depths, in the undisturbed dark of the barn it is rot. To apply it directly to something green and growing would kill the plant – it is too “hot”. But if it is brought to light and exposed, turned and exposed, it is transformed to one of the most life-giving substances on earth – fertile compost – rich soil - tilth. What was filth and decay is redeemed.

Like the floor of the barn, our outward appearance is little indication of what lies beneath. And what lies beneath is decay, which leads to death. It can be transformed to something life-giving! Christ is able to redeem even our worst attributes – our greatest failures - those that permeate us to the core with filth and shame, when we turn to him in faith. Allowing that transformation is hard. It means surrendering to light that which has been hidden in darkness. But our transformation can bring nourishment rather than rot. When we are so broken we allow ourselves to be changed –that very brokenness becomes a blessing in the lives around us. There is no greater witness to redemption than a transformed life.

There are so many scriptural references that can be used here, but I like Ephesians 5:1-20 and these verses in particular...

"For though your hearts were once full of darkness, now you are full of light from the Lord, and your behavior should show it! For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true..." Ephesians 5:8,9