Dirt, Life and Sacrifice

It has sometimes been said that “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”  I strongly disagree.  We are called to sweat, to get scraped up, and to get our hands dirty.

On Saturday I lead a group of my fellow Turner sisters to volunteer at a farm called Sow Much Good, a non-profit organization that provides organic produce to low-income neighborhoods in the surrounding area struggling with food insecurity.  The director of the organization began the program out of her backyard in the hope of helping a loved one who was homeless and had been chronically struggling with a mental illness, whose condition was only aggravated by the fact that he was being fed primarily out of processed cans and packages.  She planted extra rows in her garden to provide him with some fresh food, and soon one small mission became an operation that now includes 3 different sites and countless volunteers.  We dug, planted, raked, cleared debris, and wrestled hydrangea plants that insisted on never being relocated (a battle we won after a solid hour). Though we were only there for 3 hours, we could see the collective dent that we made and its impact for the the farm and those it serves.

As I thought about our service work and the story of this organization, I felt its profound relevance to our most recent holiday.  On Easter Sunday, we often see posters, signs and billboards with the words “He is Risen”…yet where are the posters with the question, “Now what?”  I recently encountered a book called “Yours are the hands of Christ,” which speaks of the ways in which we are called each day to do the good work entrusted to us by a Christ no longer here on earth.   Ours must be the serving hands, loving hands, wounded hands, praying hands, dirty and cracked hands, until this work is done.  We are called to sit with those in need, share in their struggle, to plant extra rows in our garden and dig in - in my heart, this is where the true beautiful messages of Easter lie.  Through all the scars, suffering, and resurrection, I believe there was a direct lesson for us to learn – that Love is sacrifice.   That when we sacrifice of our time, of our strength, and of ourselves so that others might have life in full, a little piece of heaven and earth is changed.  A little piece of humanity is saved, right here and now.  

So let’s pick up our shovels and aim for cracked skin, scrapes and dirty fingernails.  Some scars create beautiful things.