God made Dirt...

So I thought maybe I would would write several paragraphs about digging a hole. If you have never dug a really deep, non-metaphorical hole before, you will fail to appreciate the satisfaction in such a task. Last summer, Kevin, the youth pastor at our church, and I introduced some neighborhood kids to a joy of digging a really deep hole.

Our church bought this house in a pretty rough neighborhood. In fact, we purchased the ugliest house on the ugliest block. It had broken windows, ripped out plumbing, used condoms, a garage full of trash, etc. This place made a burned down carnival outhouse look like Martha Stewart's summer estate. So our church raised a bunch of money and bought it. People in the suburbs thought we were either lunatics or liberals - viewing the latter as a far more serious psychological condition. Upon reflection, we might have been a little of both (not unlike our own vice president).

The house needed to be gutted and fixed. Most of the tasks required a lot of skill - so I wasn't of much use. The lead pastor and other skilled folks would give me the type of "jobs" that Mr. Miagi might have given Daniel Son - repetitive and simplistic. I was given the job of digging out old concrete fence posts in the backyard. "I am not sure who wants to do this. It is gonna suck," remarked one of the skilled guys will a pencil behind his ear and a speed square in his hand.And so it fell to me. I started digging and like Tom Sawyer whitewashing a fence, kids started coming out from all over the neighborhood to help me - begging and bargaining to get a chance to dig. We quickly ran out of shovels. I ran home and got a few more. And we dug.

Somewhere around the 2 foot mark, it became apparent that the concrete ran deep. Some of the kids were beginning to get discouraged. But we kept digging. And one middle school kid who was particularly short and stalky barked encouragements to us all like a miniature drill sargent. "Don't give up!" "You can do it!" "Just a little more." And the biggest kid and I were digging furiously and ever more strategically. The little kids were trying to stick their hands in the hole while we dug and one kid almost lost a finger. So there we were digging together. Struggling together. Everybody drawn to one task - taking down an old barrier that was making the neighborhood look like crap. And it hit me. This is church. This is Jesus. We don't need a worship band, a sermon, a preacher. We just need to dig more holes together - to fight together, to struggle together, to make life better for each other. Destroying fences that keep us apart.

We got it out. The concrete ran over four feet underground. Me and some kids.