Sabbath Thought - Don't Let Your Grass Grow Too Long

Back in early July I had to have my riding mower serviced. We have more than an acre of yard to mow, and the mower had been running rough. It took a couple of weeks to get my mover back and it was running, and cutting, great. I had been able to mow the yard around the house with a pushmower while my riding mower was being serviced, and cut the rest of the yard once I had the riding mower back. That part of the yard had gotten longer, obviously, so I had to rake it after mowing, but the job got done.

The second time I went to cut the yard, I managed to cut one pass in the back yard when I started to smell smoke. I have a burn pit back there but I hadn't been burning anything. I quickly realized the smoke was coming from the mower. I shut it off and checked the oil - and it was dry. The place I had taken my mower to be serviced had also changed the oil, but they didn't put the quick drain nipple back on tight. My mower had been slowly leaking oil and I didn't realize it. I park the mower when I am not using it in a shed and I didn't realize it had been leaking oil. This was now late July.

I called the mower service business I used, explained the situation, and they came out to pick up the mower. The pickup person said it looked like the engine had seized up. I had to wait for them to take care of other customers before me, so it was early August before I heard back from them. The engine was indeed seized up and they had to replace the motor. Fortunately, they acknowledged that they created the problem so there would be no cost to me, but I continued without a mower for most of my yard. I called again in the middle of August and they said that it would be a week or so before they received the new motor, did the replacement and got the mower back to me.

In the meantime, the yard that I had not been mowing around the house had gotten quite tall (about 10-12"). I couldn't wait for my riding mower and got out the pushmower to work on the remaining yard. I spent about 3 hours mowing and managed to only cut a small percentage of the remaining yard. The grass was simply too tall to cut quickly or easily, and the grass catcher would fill up very quickly. Roxanne and I decided to try the weed trimmers to cut the grass first and rake everything later. That still took several hours and we only managed to cut about another fifth of the yard.

I still don't know when I will get my riding mower back, but when I do it will probably take me several days to cut and rake everything.

Roxanne pointed out that there is a spiritual lesson in all of this - it is much easier to stay on top of something important than to let it go and try and catch up later. Have we gotten out of the habit of Bible study, only to find it is really hard to get back in to that very important habit? Have we gotten lax in attending Sabbath services? Have we lagged in our prayers to God? Have we neglected our relationships with other brethren? Unfortunately, in my decades of attendance in God's Church I have seen members drift out through neglect of their calling more than doctrinal differences, conflict, or anything else.

What are we to do then? We must remember not to neglect the most important relationship we have - that is our relationship with God! Any relationship requires work - diligence - to keep the relationship healthy. Philippians 2:12 reminds us "work out your own salvation". No one else can do that for us. We can't grow tired of staying on top of the important things (Galatians 6:9). The longer we neglect anything - but especially a relationship - the harder it is to build it back.

On this Sabbath day we have time to consider the state of our spiritual relationships. We have time to attend to the important things of God so we don't "get behind" in our calling. We have the time now to work out our own salvation.

I wish you a very spiritually restful Sabbath,

Dan Dowd

24 August, 2024