“It’s not the one who plants or the one who waters who is at the center of this process but God, who makes things grow. Planting and watering are menial servant jobs at minimum wages. What makes them worth doing is the God we are serving. You happen to be God’s field in which we are working. – 1Corinthians 3:7-9
Andrea at Douglas Senior Services told us that Mrs. White, age 80, lives alone here in Douglasville and is showing signs of early Dementia and other medical issues. Her daughter who lives a good distance away but visits weekly is greatly concerned and DSS has put Mrs. White on the home delivered meals list. Could FIA help with her yard? It sounded like a job for the Rangers and Rick Cali visited Mrs. White, who happened to be receiving a visit from her sister, who was “not buying our selfless service hokum,” as Rick puts it. When Rick proudly told the sister he was a member of the Church at Chapel Hill, she responded, “you church people, you’re always working an angle. I suppose you’ll invite me to come, and if I don’t like it, what then?” Mrs. White told Rick later how the church had broken her sister’s heart. It’s a story we have heard too many times. Mrs. White was grateful for the Rangers’ help but directed them at her neighbor, and when the team came out after Rick’s reconnaissance, in addition to serving Mrs. White they cut the neighbor’s grass, trimmed, and cut down a small tree. The neighbor came outside, hands on hips and couldn’t believe that a group of boys had come to take care of the yard she could not maintain having just gotten home from the hospital. The boys and men prayed for the neighbor, who praised God for the strength she received.
On the return trip it just happened that Mrs. White’s sister was there to see the men and boys take care of the two yards and watch as prayer changed the neighbor’s return home from the hospital. Rick knelt down beside her and said, “Do you think our lives would have been different if we had started serving people as children?” Mrs. White’s sister, for once, could not speak. Then she said, “I’ve never known men like you.”
Rick and the boys understood that she was not seeing men, or boys; she was seeing God in them, making things grow.