This month I lived and worked at a Christian camp/retreat center in Albania. Within the compound there are fields to play soccer, archery, a rock climbing wall, and other camp-y kinds of things. But LightForce is also a small working farm. They have pigs and sheep and a garden that makes money to sustain the camp and also provides some of the food.
I got to weed and work in the garden a few times. One day I spent the morning picking up sheep poop to clean a field for camp activities. But the pigs. They were something else.
I knew it from the day we arrived when I could hear them squealing and screaming from the back of the compound, but for the first few weeks I had very little to do with the pigs. Two of my teammates, Erica and Emily, volunteered for the farm crew so I got to hear the stories and smell the stench (before their scheduled after-work showers of course.)
It wasn’t until last week that I got to experience it for myself. We had a free week in between camps during which we had some chores to do to bless our contact. Painting, cleaning, sprucing… and my team… whitewashing the walls in the farm.
Me, in a sea of poop.
The smell was bad. So bad that I kept catching myself unintentionally holding my breath to the point of being lightheaded. It was loud. So loud that the sound of grown pigs screaming for food sincerely made me feel like I was in Jurassic Park. And it was just plain gross. Standing in pig poop, scrubbing wall covered in mud, ducking thick spider webs and trying to move faster because you can hear there’s a rat in the hay and you’re eager to move on to the next pen.
My squadmate Ryan pointed out that this experience gives us a whole new perspective on the prodigal son. The story in Luke 15 tells us that the runaway son doesn’t want to go home to his father until he’s hit rock bottom, working with pigs, envying the food that they have to eat. In that dark and nasty place the son finally realizes how good it is in his father’s house and how much he wants to return.
And we do the same thing. At least I do.
I was praying about it at the beginning of this month. We were worshipping together as a squad and I was remembering times when I felt so close to God, times that I felt that my heart just overflowed with love for Him. I want to be in that place all the time! So I was reflecting on those times and asking God why I can’t always be so connecting to Him. And I realized that so frequently those sweet times come directly after a time of suffering. When I hit rock bottom and realize that all I have and all I want is my Heavenly Father.
I believe it’s because to truly find God we need to seek Him with all our heart. He tells us that in His word. And unfortunately when things are good it seems that we just aren’t motivated to truly seek Him with everything. We go at it half (or 1/3 or 3/4) heartedly and the results we see in our intimacy with Him reflects that.
When we are in the pig pen and we finally have to look at our crap and see it for what it is, something happens there that sends us running to Him. When I feel completely alone and my shame is just out in the open and there is no hope for me to fix it alone, I know I’m going to put all my heart and soul and mind and strength into running after my God. That is what’s going to send each one of us back to His arms.
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Side note: I really am thankful for the time I spent in the pigpen! Not only for the object lesson it served as and the things God taught me, but also just because it was a challenge and my team and I were able to find joy and laughter there despite it all. Also, now I know that I have no desire to pursue pig farming as a livelihood.
Although I must say, piglets can be pretty dang cute.
