We always love hearing the stories about the ministry someone did with orphans or widows, or how they helped teach at a school, or built relationships with lepers. Ministry, however, does not always come in such spectacular forms. Sometimes the work God calls us to do can be quite unattractive, or even outright disgusting. I found this out for myself when God called me to do something specific here in Swaziland.
My squad is living at an orphanage on top of a mountain called El-Shaddai, where they have about fifty kids that we work with. This orphanage also has about thirty geese, ten goats, numerous pigeons, and twenty-five pigs. When we have scraps of food or peels that need to be tossed, it is all put in a bucket so that it can be fed to these pigs. Taking the scraps to the pigs is something I have enjoyed doing, because I can take some orphan kids with me to go hand feed these pigs, and they love doing it.
This last time I was feeding the pigs, I noticed that quite a bit of manure had built up in some places. When they clean out the pens, they use a hose and broom to push the waste into a run-off. One of these run-offs goes right in front of a door that you enter some of the pens from, and it had become clogged up from there being so much manure washed into it. Curious, I asked a man who works at the orphanage what their plan for unclogging and cleaning out that run-off was. He shrugged his shoulders and said they didn’t really have a plan because the lady who works with the pigs and cleans the pens had just gone on holiday and wouldn’t be back for a while.
And so guess what God tells me to do? Yup, you guessed it: He tugged on my heart, showing me how helpful it would be for them if I cleaned out this run-off. So, once my off-time came, I got a bucket, a shovel, a broom, and the hose and got to work unclogging the manure. A few hours and thirty-five shoveled up gallons of manure later, the run-off was finally clean and able to flow again. The job was smelly and by the end I had waste splashed all over me, but I couldn’t have felt more proud. God had shown me a way I could greatly help someone, and then given me the strength and the means to accomplish the task, no matter how dirty.
God doesn’t always call us to do spectacular things; our ministry will not always involve the sick being healed or hundreds giving their lives to Jesus after we give a sermon. Sometimes our ministry will be shoveling manure. But that doesn’t make it any less important; God calls us to do different things in different seasons, and it is up to us to only obey. Sometimes it may be a horribly dirty job, but we are asked to do all things for the Lord, and our obedience in those crazy things are how we show God how much we love Him and want to serve Him. The not-so-glamorous ministries are the opportunities where we can show our obedience the most.
