Manure Fork

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8 (NIV)

I just heard the State of Florida is mandating power companies to investigate alternative sources of electricity and one area that they are experimenting with is manure recycling. They are working to turn the manure into methane. Where do I sign up for that? I will give them all the manure they want, and they can give me a credit on my power bill. With three horses, we have plenty to go around. I think we spend about seven to ten hours a week on manure disposal. It would be just as easy to load it onto a truck to be hauled away as it would be to chop it up and spread it for fertilizer. Fortunately, I don’t have to do as much of the manure duty these days. When we brought a third horse into the barn, it added a third pair of hands to share the work. While I continue to do morning feeding, Tarzan’s owner, who does not go to work until mid morning, is now responsible for letting the horses out of their stalls and cleaning up after them. Whoever gets home first in the evening, then, puts them back in their stalls and feeds, but rarely have they left us a deposit on the stalls at that time of day. They mostly use the pasture unless it had been storming. On weekends, whoever gets out there first does chores. This weekend, when I went out to clean stalls, I noticed that both manure forks were broken. These many pronged plastic “forks” scoop up the manure and let the wood shavings fall back into the stall. They work fine in the stall, but when we use them to pick up manure in the pasture, they often get caught on tree roots or grass and the tines break off. When I did chores on Saturday morning, I only had half the fork to use which made clean up a challenge. Every time I got a forkful, half of it fell down into the stall and had to be picked up again. As I had left grocery shopping for Saturday, something I have been trying not to do in an effort to conserve gas, I decided to go to the farm supply as well. There, I bought two brand new manure forks with all their teeth attached. What a difference they make! It takes so much less energy to do it right the first time. Using a broken manure fork is the same as trying to do God’s work in our own strength. So many times, I know God is calling me to minister for Him, but I fail to ask Him to give me the power to do it. I think I can do it alone, but when I try to do it that way, I almost always fail to do the job well. He gives me the power, all I have to do is ask. So, why do I keep using the broken fork?