Forty two years of marriage… calculating cleaning toilets for forty of those years once a week (two years off for vacations and hired help sometimes), I have cleaned one toilet 2080 times. Some of those years we had multiple bathrooms but I am depressed enough looking at that figure without adding to it. No wonder I occasionally feel like Eeyore contemplating the meaning of my life. My friend Leisa and I were talking about jobs you don’t get to retire from and this one was at the top of the list. Cooking can be creative. Cleaning the house can leave you feeling good about the way it looks but cleaning toilets has no feel good component to it at all.
Sometimes work can be satisfying, fulfilling, well paid if nothing else. And sometimes, work is just work, necessary but not much reward. Brother Lawrence had a great deal to say about using our work, even the least satisfying work, as a vehicle for praising God. In theory, I appreciate the sentiment but in reality, I have to keep kicking myself as a reminder. All work is not created equal. Somehow most of us find a balance between the necessary evils like toilet cleaning and the work that gives meaning to our lives.
I am the pianist for our little church. On Tuesday we have choir practice for two hours. Sunday mornings, I get to church early so I can get ready for the prelude and arrange my music. This is work. No pay but the satisfaction of being involved in a church music program again. Every morning I muck out the horse and donkey stalls, feed Ferdinand the bull, feed the cats and dogs. Most days I feed the cows and regularly spray them for flies. No pay but the satisfaction of relationships with animals. I am cleaning house this week getting ready for a church picnic at our house this next Sunday. Sprucing up, changing the slipcovers, weeding the flower beds, dusting, picking up and cleaning up. No pay but the satisfaction of extending hospitality to a faith community that is dear to my heart.
An old hymn I used to sing at Pinetta Baptist Church comes to mind. “To the work! To the work! We are servants of God; Let us follow the path that our Master has trod; With the balm of his counsel our strength to renew, Let us do with our might what our hands find to do. Toiling on, toiling on, toiling on, toiling on; Let us hope (and trust) let us watch (and pray) and labor ‘til the Master comes.” Like the Jews in Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, give me a mind to work, Lord, so I might show myself worthy of this gift of life. Keep me moving on, toiling on, singing on my way as I do the work I have been given to do. Thank you for a healthy body that can work. And now, Lord, excuse me, please, while I go scrub toilets.
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