God’s Call to Deal With the Crap of Life
Wednesday, September 17, 2025
Sharing the Mystery of Christ
Pristine Bush?
That’s Full of Crap.
Jeremiah 20:9
If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,” then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.
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Colossians 4:3-4
At the same time pray for us as well that God will open to us a door for the word, that we may declare the mystery of Christ, for which I am in prison, so that I may reveal it clearly, as I should.
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Words of Grace for Today –
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Away for a few days (a family gathering, a dance, a strained ankle needing recovery) I returned to find everything as I left it in my camp: all the work to prepare for winter still left for someone to do, and since there’s only me, it’s left for me to do.
Thankfully no one came in (as sometimes past threatened and done) to steal, damage, or destroy the camp.
All’s well!
Until I find tracks where there should be none; unidentified until I find a dozen or so cow pies on the grass. The adjacent grazing land was bought by a new owner and the cows are grazing it. Some obviously got out and spent a few days and nights eating the green grass around the camp. The pies are prime breeding grounds for flies, both bothersome and unhealthy … and most unpleasant are the little, nearly invisible ones that dive bomb in, bite and escape leaving a sting behind. One is not much, but a hundred within a minute or so becomes shockingly painful.
So the next morning in the cool I clean them all up into the wheelbarrow and haul them far away where they’ll do no harm, dump them and clean out the wheelbarrow and the shovel. Back at the camp I find one cow pie that I missed. I shovel it into the wheelbarrow, but I leave it for later to dump, since I may have missed more.
Always, always, always there’s someone else’s crap to clean up.
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God sent Jeremiah out to warn the people that God was tired of cleaning up their crap, that God was going to leave them to the mercy (or no-mercy as it was) of their enemies.
Jeremiah tried in many ways to avoid this unpleasant calling, but could not.
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Jesus sends us out to proclaim the mystery of Christ, God’s love for all people. Jesus came to pay the price for all our crap, to free us from it and all that flies wildly free from it.
Are we ready to deal with the crap that will be thrown at us if we engage in this calling?