As a United Methodist, I believe that God changes us through his grace and that this grace, with the help of the Holy Spirit, can be received through works.
As a part of my own personal theology of trying to get to heaven through yard work, I spent the morning pouring concrete around some fence posts I was setting in my back yard in order to repair my chain link fence.
I installed the fence about 10 years ago. I say about 10, but it may have been as few at 8 or as many as 15. Like the poet Willie Nelson asked, “Ain’t it funny how time slips away?”
I’ve written earlier detailing the process of putting up the fence and my reasons for the fence’s creation. The reasons can be summarized as follows: Our neighborhood at the time was full of kids and dogs; I built the fence to keep the right ones in and the wrong ones out.
At the time I did it, I’d never built a fence of any type nor had I been involved with anyone else while they were doing so, even in the capacity of watching. All I had was the material that I bought from Tri-state Construction and the examples of such fences as I had seen. You might say that my efforts were led by the Spirit.
When I was finished with the construction, the product looked exactly like a fence that had been put up by someone who’d never built one before and that perhaps a spirit, but certainly not a Holy one had been involved.
Don’t get me wrong; it was functional. It kept dogs in and kids out and vice versa, but it lacked the look of a professional product.
Let me risk a little whimsy by saying that the act of building a chain link fence is like losing your virginity. Once you’ve done it, there is no going back, regardless of how good or bad the outcome was. You then have a kind of knowledge you didn’t have before.
After I’d built my fence, and my big brother saw it, he immediately knew how to do it himself, so he went home and did it better, fencing in his own back yard. My brother is like this. All he lacks is faith. Once he has faith, there was nothing stopping him. He knew that if I could do it, then he could do it, and, when he was done, he produced a professional product. If he ever quits school-teaching, bus-driving, and teaching driver’s education, I think he could earn a living installing chain-link fence.
Then, a couple of years ago, I showed my friend Paul Herring how to do it when we put up the fence around the playground at church. Lloyd Knell and Bob Susnik helped too; I hope I’m not leaving anyone out, and if I am, I pray they forgive me.
I am pretty sure that if Paul had ever seen the fence I’d put around my own yard, he never would’ve believed me when I said we could do it ourselves. It’s not that Paul lacks the gift of faith, but, as you may know, faith is the evidence of things unseen. In this case, Paul had faith because he’d left my fence unseen.
We are entering into mysterious — or Mysterious, as the Catholics would say — territory here. While, on one hand, I taught him how to put up a chain-link fence, on the other hand, as we did it, he showed me how to do it better. Whether it was the hand of God or just the classical interaction between scientists and engineers, I don’t know, but I do know it happened.
Today, I set the posts in concrete, and discovered I was a lot neater about it than I was the first time. I got less concrete on myself, I was more careful about getting the posts even, and I called 1-800-DIG-SAFE beforehand. By beforehand I mean before today, but after I cut the buried phone line.
Mixing concrete to set the posts is not a complicated process as it only requires Quickrete, a wheelbarrow, water, and a shovel. You take a bag of Quickrete, place it in a wheelbarrow, cut the bag open with a shovel, and then remove the bag from around it. Then you mix in the water with the shovel.
As I carried the Quickrete out of the garage to the wheelbarrow — the chicks really dig this by the way — I was pleased that it seemed lighter than when I’d done it all those years ago and took it as a sign of God’s blessing of my efforts towards better health and self-improvement. It was also evidence the bacon and eggs for breakfast had given me the extra energy I’d hoped for.
Then I noticed that they sell Quickrete in 60-pound bags now and not the 80-pound bags they had before. The Lord does work in mysterious ways.
I will stretch the fence tomorrow if the Spirit moves me.
Bobby Winters is Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Mathematics at Pittsburg State University. He is pastor of the Opolis United Methodist Church.
PITTSBURG —
