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

5 questions come to mind in this verse.

What does the oxen represent?   What good does the oxen bring?  Can the oxen make things messy?  What does the harvest represent? What does the clean vs not so clean stable say about life?

opportunity vs security

One thought that I have spoken over and over to others and repeated it to myself  is this: opportunity and security do not go hand in hand.  Opportunity requires hard, messy, and challenging work.  Security may be a  clean tidy life but also an unchallenged life .

Do you feel God is leading you somewhere?

Do you desire a new direction in life?

Do you feel a calling or prompting to do something for your church or maybe a new job direction and it scares you?  Your life seems nice and neat and you know following a dream or challenge will disrupt it.  You are right! Following a calling or a project will require faith and stretching of abilities.  It includes dealing  fear, trust, sleepless nights, and learning new methods of working into new unknown ventures.  It’s messy but wonderful.  Opportunity is not neat and tidy but rather a little scary and requires faith in GOD as He empowers and leads. It can be messy but a wonderful and exciting kind of mess.

You can live a simple, safe life without a real challenge.  Your life will be neat and tidy,  but you will not experience  possible achievements.  Opportunity and security do not go hand in hand.  You have one or the other.  So why not push away from tidy and simple life into something bigger than you and step out in faith  for direction.  Genesis 12:1  The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.”  It was messy in Abrams life but He had a calling and repeated promises from GOD.  Abraham life was messy and filled with wrong choices but in the end he birthed the nation of Israel.

Many men and women in the  Bible and all around the world  took the messy challenge of a harvest in what ever form it represents  and found reward and blessing. 

No one owes you a living.

If there is one lesson that kids need to learn it is this.  No one owes you a living. No one owes you reward.  You must study,  make mistakes, challenge life,  get back up and press on in life.  It’s messy, hard but also can be very fulfilling.

Be a messy  achiever following a calling or business endeavor rather than a safe, clean secure life without reward of a financial or spiritual blessing. You will find fear, faith, wisdom, mistakes, excitement,  weariness but all with lightnside.