Count the Bags Before You Rake the Leaves

Saturday morning, I decided to rake leaves. Our home has a little over 30 trees on the lot, and all but maybe four lose their leaves, so this is by no means a one day operation. I decided to focus on the driveway and the large space just in front of our front door (home to about 8 small to medium sized trees and some ivy). Pretty soon, I noticed how much I raked and blown up, and thought, to make it more fun, I'd see how tall a pile I could make. Plus, then the kids could play in a ginormous pile of decaying leaves. This is the result:

That is about three and a half feet tall, and about ten feet long. It is also in the middle of the driveway (that's important). The kids had a blast, but it was time to finish the job, because we had lunch to eat and a movie to get to. I go to grab the leaf bags and out falls two. That's it. I spent a bit of time looking from the bags to the pile, squarely placed in the MIDDLE of the driveway, and trying to figure out how to fit it all in the bags I had. Both of them.

In the end, I had to push the leaves I couldn't get bagged up (about 75%) off to the side so a car could get out to go get more leaf bags. And I was left remembering Jesus teaching that you needed to count the cost before you begin to build, or something to that effect. I had jumped into something very much excited, but I lacked the equipment, and the time, to complete the job.

I've seen this become a problem in so many of our lives of late. Not just when it comes to our spiritual walk, but in EVERY aspect of our lives we jump in with both feet only to discover our available resources and time don't match our excitement. So we get stressed, we sacrifice other, often important, things to finish the task we once approached with great excitement. Now, we approach it with an obligated feeling that we have to finish what we started.

I get what Jesus is saying. We need to make sure we are willing to give a job, or a calling, or a ministry, or a task all that it needs well before we drop ourselves into the commitment. We need to stop making promises that we can't keep without severely compromising the integrity of the endeavor- or the integrity of the other things we are already committed to.

Know your limits, what you can take on before you get so far in you can't get out without finishing it. Know what you have to offer before you commit what you don't have.

And please, please, count the leaf bags before blocking the driveway with a leaf mountain.