When I signed up for the race, and every mission trip for that matter, I picture myself feeding hungry people, holding and loving on sick children etc. That is the kind of ministry I love. But sometimes God likes to use us in different ways and has a unique way of speaking to us and teaching us. For me, He did that this month through lime scrubbing the walls of pig pens. Not too long ago I would have laughed and I wouldn’t have called that ministry one bit, I would have called it unfortunate. But God had different plans for me this month. He has been teaching me many things these past few weeks and one of them is that it doesn’t matter what you are doing, you can always do it for The Lord.
Part of our work here is helping prepare the camp for winter. We are doing this by scrubbing the walls with a lime sediment mix that will help protect them during the winter.
Where did I get assigned that first day? The pig pens.
Pig pens are naturally pretty gross and messy and filled with little critters and cob webs. That wasn’t a surprise or complaint of mine. What I didn’t understand was why we were scrubbing on top of all of this gunk. Did they not realize how many times we would have to scrub over that to make them look white again? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just power wash everything away and then lime scrub so it would actually stick and be more effective? I caught myself with this thinking numerous times but would quickly tell myself that even though I am doing this for our ministry contact and helping his workers, ultimately I am serving The Lord by honoring the requests of George. And that’s what really matters.
I was also reminded by a teammate that lime washing is similar to the work God does on us. We all have our own mess of crap that surrounds certain aspects of our character, similar to what covered the walls of the pig pens. It doesn’t take just one coat to get the job done with the walls, we have to go over it again and again and eventually they will start to turn white again. This is similar to the work that God does on us. More often that not The Lord chooses to have us walk through the mess, that way we can appreciate how far we have come.
And when we do this, God promises to wash us white as snow.
Isaiah 1:18 “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”
Psalm 51:7 Revelation 7:14
