The Dirty Work

My daughter is a very calm, quiet, rational person, unless there is a spider in her room. Knowing this, I cringed to hear about the duty she pulled at work.

She is employed by a large greenhouse, and one day they all took turns going into one of the sections of the store, pulling items away from the wall, and cleaning behind them. She had to vacuum spiders, and with eyes wide she said, Some of them were so big I was afraid they wouldn’t even fit down the tube of the vacuum hose.

Let us shudder.

But sometimes the boss needs dirty work done, and you just do it.

It’s no different living as a servant of the Most High God. Sometimes he’ll send us places we don’t want to go, to accomplish tasks we aren’t throwing a party about.

Like Moses, bless him. He was thrilled to go to Egypt and chest up to the Pharoah. Woohoo. We see him looking around for anyone else who could do it.

But the Lord says, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So…

…so now, go.

I am sending you…” (Exodus 3:7,10 NIV)

The spiderwebs are getting bad, so I’m sending you with the vacuum.

What needs done trumps how we feel about the task.

Of course, in the moment all we can see are the spiders and the pharaoh. Just before being obedient we only see everything wrong and dangerous and unappealing and uncomfortable about what we’re being told to do. We can’t imagine an altar of worship and singing on the other side of a red sea. We can’t imagine lives changed on the other side of taking the risk.

God says to us the same words he said to Moses, “So now…”

Are we willing to get our hands dirty?