The Dog House In My Garden

I never actually saw the doghouse in my garden.

It was gone before we moved here.

Twelve years ago when we bought this house, the former owner pointed out a wooden platform toward the back of the yard and told me he built it to keep his dog’s house above the damp ground.

I’d left the platform stand all these years and used it to store odd bits of lumber.

Wednesday, I tore that platform down as part of my home fix-up campaign.

The 4X4 supporting pilings of the doghouse extended four feet underground with only six inches showing above the surface.

I pounded them from side to side with a sledgehammer to loosen them before I could pry them out.

I am not a sledgehammer kind of guy.

Today, I ache.

I needed to remove the old doghouse platform in order to run an underground electric cable to another outbuilding. This meant I had to splice electric lines together. To waterproof (I hope) this line, I cut an old rubber bicycle inner-tube, ran the wire through the resultant hollow, sealed the ends, and dug a trench to bury the thing.

Slight problem.

Six or eight inches below the present surface of the ground, I discovered a brick patio. Over the years water-washed silt had covered this brick pavement and grass had seeded itself over top. Until I began digging, I had no idea that bricks underlay that section of my yard.

That must have been the Gibraltar of all doghouses!

At various times during the day I talked with three visitors who interrupted my work: one needed to borrow tools; one needed consolation on a death in his family; one needed help with a confidential problem.

I love pittering around in my garden. I enjoy solving landscaping problems, watching birds, squirrels and lizards, viewing flowers, rescuing spiders from the sprinkler can, mowing grass, sitting smoking my pipe while pondering the next step in tending the garden.

I think the Lord created Adam to do just this sort of thing, to pitter in the garden and walk with God.

People should enjoy their work and enjoy peace in God’s company.

But, Adam and Eve ate the onion.

Sin brought forth sickness, turmoil, death.

And thorns infest the ground.

Then Christ, who Paul calls the Second Adam, came to save us and to destroy the works of the devil. I think ideally He came to restore us so we, like that first Adam, could pitter in our garden, everyman under his own fig tree, and enjoy God’s company.

To a certain extent, that’s the life I daily enjoy now — and I feel a tad guilty about it.

Yes, pittering in the garden and enjoying peace should be the natural state of every Christian. Such is normal life (of course with adjustments for individual tastes and callings, but you get the idea).

However during a war, peaceful people get drafted into the army. We leave home and hearth and garden flowers to live in tents, sleep on the ground, eat combat rations, expose ourselves to loneliness, death and dismemberment.

We live in a war zone.

We live in enemy occupied territory.

There’s a Heaven to gain and a Hell to shun.

Wounded people — blasted and torn, screaming and moaning in pain, crying out for help — litter the battlefield. The stench of death cloys our air. Hardships and vicious cruelties abound.

Sometimes, I indeed feel guilty about the peace I enjoy while pittering in my garden; I feel as though I ought to do more, to devote more time and energy to evangelism and social service.

But sometimes I also wonder if my role is not that of a supply clerk. While not in direct combat myself, maybe I contribute a little something to the war effort.

Yes, sometimes our calling is to simply write encouraging letters to soldiers in the field.

To remind them of Home.