A few weekends ago, we decided to take our youth group to a city-wide clean up at our neighborhood park, four blocks from where we live. I thought it would be a good opportunity to meet some our neighbors and shine some light in the community. So at 8:45 on Saturday morning, with five of the hardy-har-har faithful from the youth group, we headed down to the park.

The event was incredibly well organized. We arrived 5 minutes early and people were already planting trees at the front of the park. As we found out later during the 30 minutes of speeches, this was an event organized by the Fairmount Park Commission, the Philadelphia Department of Recreation and several other city organizations. There was free breakfast and lunch, free T-shirts and a raffle. As we stood in line to register for this grand, government sponsored shindig, one of the leaders asked us excitedly if we would like to help with the "Woodland Restoration."

I assumed that "Woodland Restoration" was fancy talk for picking up trash. We met Jason who was in charge of our little detail. He seemed like a normal guy--my age and my hair cut. While we waited to start, we ate breakfast and picked up our free T-shirts. Roughly 30 minutes after we arrived, we finally got around to "Woodland Restoration." Jason took us to where the woods started to get thick at the back of the park. He began by welcoming us to Fairmount Park, which was confusing--we thought we were in Juniata Park.

We soon realized that we were leaving not only Juniata Park, but Kansas and left field too. After some basic safety instructions, that included (I'm not exaggerating here) warnings not to put our fingers in between the blades of the hedge clippers, he explained what "Woodland Restoration" was all about. We were going to be pulling out the "invasives." The "invasives" are the fast growing plants that are killing the "natives" by blocking their sunlight and stealing their nutrients. The "natives" were here first and have a woody stalk. He led us over to the edge of the forest to demonstrate the differences. He had even tied little ribbons on several of the "natives" so we would know what they looked like.

It wasn't like I didn't pay attention to this highly informative lecture. Really, I did. About an hour later, I was obediently digging up some particularly vicious "invasives" by the roots, when somehow a "native" got caught in the crossfire. Jason appeared out of nowhere.
"Hey, hey that's not supposed to be dug up," Jason said trying to politely hide his frustration. I failed to identify with his angst. Over the last hour, I had become the savior of dozens of "natives." Surely all the drug dealers and skateboarders wouldn't notice one less "native." He grabbed my shovel and started digging like there was an infant trapped in a dry well beneath us.
"Maybe, we can, still save it." He said breathlessly in between shovels.
"If it's going to make it, this is best time of year to plant it." He was almost done; I was biting my tongue.
"Now, we won't make that mistake again, will we?" he said as he handed my shovel back to me. I kept my mouth shut. It wouldn't be a good example to my youth group if I whacked some city worker with a shovel.

During the two and half hours that we worked, we had our pictures taken four separate times. Just think about how many more "natives" could have been saved if those cameras had been shovels. The park clean up had turned into a tree-hugging photo shoot.

There aren't any stories about Juniata residents. Out of the three hundred plus people who showed, we were basically the only ones there from Juniata.

Litterbugs aren't the only reason that Philadelphia parks are so dirty.

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"Help me to humble myself before thee
by seeing the vanity of honor
as a conceit of men's minds,
as standing between me and thee;
by seeing that thy will must alone be done,
as much in denying as in giving
spiritual enjoyments;"
Valley of Vision

The Results of Serving the Lord


Too often I see this as a right instead of a privilege. I minister or love someone hard to love and I pat myself on the back. I think I deserve it. And God is gracious to reward us; however, it is arrogant of me to think I deserve the reward. Instead I should be thinking of my devotion to Christ. I do what I do and love others not because I get something out of it, but because of who Christ is. God's will must be done. I should have the same attitude of devotion in denying as much as enjoying. Even though we might hear sermons about denying ourselves, and even though it sounds spiritual when we talk about it, how many of us actually deny ourselves and not expect the reward. We selfishly give up something, we put our life on the alter, and then point it out to people so we can be praised. Or we put ourselves in the way of spiritual enjoyments, but never go near the alter. We must do God's will alone.

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A license plate cover on the way to work this morning: Happiness is biting my parrot back.


Has to be the most original definition of happiness I've ever seen.

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Sarah and I have been youth leaders at Bethel for almost a year now. We're having a blast! As you can see, Sarah's learning how to use this cool photo stuff.

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