I Have a Dream

I Have a Dream
copyright lani wiens, 2010
a fresh flowers original

"Without oxen a stable stays clean,
but you need a strong ox for a large harvest."
Proverbs 14:4

I like clean. I like it a lot. However, with a busy household of eight people and a lifestyle of ministry and hospitality, mess is inevitable. Mess shows that there is life. Wherever there is life, you can be sure there will be a mess. If you don't believe me check out a birthing room sometime.

We like to avoid mess and work as much as possible. As a society we keep inventing machines and gadgets to help us avoid mess and work. On our farm we have a dream. It's a big messy dream with a lot of work involved. Some days I strongly dislike that dream because of all the work in entails. Most days, though, I wish the dream was reality.

We would like to be able to be as self-sustaining on our farm as possible, producing our own food, power and income. We have the bare beginnings of this in our first building that we've moved on. It's just a shell now, but with a lot of effort it will house chickens and a milk cow. From that we will be able to produce much of what eats up our grocery bill at the moment. We already have a fairly big garden area but we are looking at ways to make it more productive and produce more in a smaller area. We want more fruit trees, a wind turbine, a few head of cattle for beef, possibly a pig or two. Can you see it? I can. I can see the wonder of the harvest, gleaming shelves of jars full of fruit and vegetables, frothy milk being turned into butter and cheese, Freezers full of meat and vegetables. Golden wheat being milled for lovely bread (we already do that) spread with honey from our own beehives.

That lovely bubble pops around the time I think about how long it will take to get there and how much work it will take to make the dream a reality. I like the clean stable, but what I really want is the harvest, which means an ox is going to have to move in and oxen tend to poop. Yup, if you want to get a harvest you're going to have to deal with a little of that (or maybe a lot). All of that manure is great for the produce harvest.

Along with all of the dreams of our farm we have dreams for ministry as well. We see young people alive with passion for Jesus, giving up the things that hinder and distract them so that they can be sold out to their Father. We see passionate worship, intense prayer, hands and hearts that serve. We're not there yet. We could keep a clean ministry stable just having everyone pass through our stable and not leaving a lot in their wake other than a few fingerprints that are easily wiped away, or we can let them take up residence. We have some oxen in there doing their thing. Those oxen need to be trained, tended to and loved, they need to be fed and watered and yes, someone needs to tend to the poop. It tends to stink, but we can't leave it in the barn. In the end, after we've done the work, we'll get the large harvest. I can see it.

I'm looking for the harvest, I anticipate the harvest and I will revel in the harvest as it comes, in the meantime, I'm getting out my work gloves and rubber boots and a big shovel.