Always Give Thanks!

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Thank God for the poo!

I had a couple of hilarious, holy joy moments recently – one of them right in the middle of a serious prayer meeting.  It was an intense week on many levels personally and corporately at work.  The group I was praying with had just shared their stress and challenges, but we decided to praise God anyway, which we started to do with a gentle praise song.  I am painting the picture here of quiet, serious, intentional prayer.  Bridie, our most gentle and lady-like member began to pray, describing a picture she saw of a field full of trees.  Some of the trees were healthy and some unhealthy but fertilizer was being applied to all.  “Oh,” she said, in a light bulb moment, “both need the fertilizer, both the healthy and the unhealthy need what the fertilizer brings, well then, thank God for the poo!”

We burst out laughing! Holy joy!  What a fantastic God picture!  Fertilizer often stinks when it is thrown around. Bridie owns horses and she knows what it is to “muck out” the horse manure.  In fact, I had once asked her for a bucket of it to put on the garden.  Her blunt, candid prayer so described our week, our thoughts, and feelings. Yet it totally changed our perspective – that’s the God moment, the God answer.  As much as we were all struggling with the challenges we were facing, we realised that the fertilizer makes us grow. Stinky things, difficult things are the very things that bring the nutrients that turn an unhealthy tree into a healthy one and a healthy tree to become more abundant in its fruit, and God, the master gardener, has no qualms about throwing the fertiliser around us – especially when we want to be the branch that bears much fruit.

A couple of days later, as I was walking around my neighbourhood, doing a grumble to God about somethings, I walked into a pile of horse manure!  Thank God for the poo!  Holy joy!  Fruit is coming!!

16-18 Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live. – 1 Thessalonians 5 (MSG)

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