Contemplative Bible Reading

Proverbs 14:4 (New Living Translation)

Without oxen a stable stays clean,
but you need a strong ox for a large harvest.

Start with the second statement: an ox is a useful and sometimes necessary tool for farming. Now to the first statement: if you don’t have an ox, you don’t have to shovel the manure out of the stable. Ahh, a clean, no-effort stable, but then again, you can’t farm.

Funny how this works. Necessary tools bring necessary work to maintain the tools. If you have a church building, you have to repair the roof, replace the air conditioners and the carpet and the… It goes on seemingly forever. But then again, you can meet and you can do all sorts of other things that involve people who like to have a roof over their head.