It's mud season on the farm. We were hit with a big blizzard earlier this week and now in true Minnesota March fashion, all that heavy wet snow has melted and we find ourselves living in mud season.
I have a love/ hate relationship with this particular season. With five dogs, mud season means a whole lot more floor cleaning, stopping muddy dogs at the door for a quick towel off and we are quickly discovering how muddy a pasture gets with a big cow stomping in puddles. So while mud season often means more work, it is also the season that heralds spring. The light lasts longer, the ground starts to smell of the possibility of growing things and I get an over ambitions desire to plant a big garden and buy too many chicks at the feed store. There is something delightful about stepping in mud in my muck boots, hearing it squelch around the edges. I think it takes me back to being a kid, to a time when a good day included making mud pies in the backyard with berries from the bushes and mint leaves from the wild mint along the back fence. At the end of the day the mud, dried and streaked across arms and shins and cheeks told a story of joy.
When do we lose the joy found in the mud? At what age does playing in the mud shift from fun to frustration? When does it shift from a substance that calls us to create to a mess that we have to clean up? I am guessing that mud has it's seasons too. Right now it very well may feel to you that you ( or we- the whole country) are stuck IN the mud. That feeling that if you move, you will lose your boot, fall face first, and be truly immobilized. This particular season is creating all sorts of gigantic messes that are going to require so much clean up. This mud is going to track and leave footprints all over the furniture, the floor, your new pair of white capri's...
I stumbled upon Psalm 40 this week. Here are the first few lines from Eugene Peterson's interpretation The Message.
40 1-3 I waited and waited and waited for God.
At last he looked; finally he listened.
He lifted me out of the ditch,
pulled me from deep mud.
He stood me up on a solid rock
to make sure I wouldn’t slip.
He taught me how to sing the latest God-song,
a praise-song to our God.
More and more people are seeing this:
they enter the mystery,
abandoning themselves to God.
4-5 Blessed are you who give yourselves over to God,
turn your backs on the world’s “sure thing,”
ignore what the world worships;
The world’s a huge stockpile
of God-wonders and God-thoughts.
Nothing and no one
compares to you!
"The world's a huge stockpile of God-wonders and God-thoughts". Remember what God does with mud? Creates our very being, heals with a crazy mix of mud and spit. I think God finds joy in mud season. And so how do we trust that God will pull us from the deep mud? How do we turn from being stuck to singing the latest God-song? How do we move from being a 'stick in the mud' to instead finding joy in the elemental goodness that comes from soil and water?
For me, it will start with my muck boots. Enjoying the moment my feet slide into their sturdy structure, the sound they make as I cross the pavement and then squish into the mud of the pasture. I will return my thoughts to the possibility found in mud season- of growing things and warm days and memories of mud pies. And when the mud of the world begins to suck me in- I will look with fervor for the God-wonders and God-thoughts to be found in the mud.
Comentários