Dead Stick

The bed of amaryllis I photographed last week has put out a few more flowers—and it’s not finished yet! Some stalks have hardly broken through the soil.

To avoid working or thinking this past week, I’ve engaged in yard work. Mowing, pruning, raking, cleaning, moving stuff that I haven’t touched since November.

The yard went to pot over the winter.

The yard is not the only thing.

Stifled because of age, arthritis and physical inactivity, added to just plain laziness, I find that I’ve grown weaker. I’m not able to sustain hard work long enough to get a job done in one push.

After every 20 minutes work, I need a 20 minute break.

Ginny and I enjoy a rest area under an awning attached to a shed. Two comfortable chairs, a side table for coffee cups, an easy-listening station on the radio, fountain bubbling close at hand, bird feeders visible, our rest area provides a panoramic view of the yard.

Problem is… the view from our rest station also provides an overwhelming view of work that still needs doing. Any direction I look, I see things that need fixing—for instance, I see that dead stick hooked in the foliage of the flamingo plant.

As soon as coffee break is over, I’m going to pick up that dead stick.

I knock out my pipe and start toward the flamingo plant…I hear the pool pump making a funny noise. I shut off the pump and bleed air from the line. Doing that I see pollen stuck on the pump housing and turn on the hose to wash it off. But the hose leaks and I need to replace a washer.

I forget about the dead stick.

Time for a smoke break.

By the time I get my pipe stoked, I look across the yard and see that dead stick sticking up in the flamingo plant.

I finish my break and walk over to get that stick, but Ginny calls me to help her move a big potted Tree of Heaven. Moving that, we see leaves trapped behind the pot need to be swept up…the broom is out front. Go get it and see the gate hangs loose…

I forget about the dead stick.

Time for another smoke break.

I sit down listening to the radio—and see the dead stick still sticking.

Drink my coffee down and walk toward the flamingo plant to move the dead stick. Step on a thorn ball. Hurt my foot. Sit down again. See the stick.

Break over, I got to get the stick.. but first I sharpen the mower blade, check the oil. Clean the air filter…

I forget to pick up the dead stick.

Break time again…. Look across the yard. That dead stick spoils the view. That thing is so annoying… but the only time I notice it is when I sit down to rest. The thing remains forgotten and invisible until I get still from all my activities. Only then does the dead stick come into view.

It’s there all the time, but I just don’t see it until I stop doing other stuff.

What you see depends on what you’re looking at.

Ginny experiences this same process of seeing a chore she intends to do while she’s at rest, then bypassing it once she starts moving.

She said, “Working together as a team, there’s just no end of things which we don’t get done”.

Not to be irreverent here, comparing God Almighty to a dead stick, but the Scripture that comes to my mind is, “Be Still and know that I am God”.

I get so busy.

Too busy.

When exhaustion overcomes me, it forces me to stop running around doing stuff and realize that the Lord has been there all along. Exhaustion forces me to notice. Weakness calls Him to my attention. I put Him on the list of things I intend to get around to… but then I forget.

That dead stick in the flamingo tells me something.

I need to voluntarily quit being busy with important things, and tend to the Preeminent Thing in my life….

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing”.

That’s not Scripture.

That’s what did the cowboy said in the movie City Slickers?

But it speaks to my condition.