Proverbs 14:4 (ESV) Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.

Have you ever walked into a stable area where oxen are kept? It is smelly and dirty. But if it is smelly and dirty, that means that there are oxen in there, which means that if you need to get some work done that requires using the strength of oxen, you will be able to get it done. To have a clean and nice-smelling stable, it has to be empty. If it's empty, it’s useless.

This unusual proverb that people usually do not pay too much attention to is actually full of wisdom. It speaks to the usual tendency that we as human beings have of complaining about everything. For example, when our two boys were babies, there were a lot of diapers to change and a lot messes to clean up, some of which were pretty horrific at the time but that looking back, are quite hysterically funny. Then when the boys were a little older, our house was usually strewn with toys everywhere. We may not have owned oxen, but we had two growing boys that kept us busy keeping the house clean. Sometimes when we were very tired and the boys weren’t having their best day in cooperating with us, we would complain about the difficulty of it all. Now that they’ve grown up, the house is clean all the time with not much to disturb that state of being, but we sure do miss the commotion of a full house with young children keeping things moving, eventful, challenging and yes...joyful.

I believe that the Word of God is teaching us that we many times look at the current stage of our lives with the wrong set of eyes. When you belong to the Lord Jesus, you should enjoy every phase of life and thank Him for His mercy, His grace and His blessings. If you are truly following Christ and not just going through the motions of being a churchgoer, then you will recognize God’s plan and purpose through it all. You won’t miss out on the things that you usually take for granted or that you sometimes complain about. You’ll stop wishing that your “manger” would stay clean and thank the Lord that the mess and the smell means that you are alive, that life is happening and that you have been blessed beyond what you deserve. It may be messy, but it is messy because life is moving forward as it should.

Instead of missing moments that we should be thanking God for, let’s be alert, sober and thankful for it all. When life gets challenging, thank Him for the fact that you can go to Him to get the strength that you need for trying times and that those trying times give you the opportunity to see the Lord work wonders in your life while shaping and molding you into the image of Jesus. Thank God that the mess and the smelliness of life means that you are still here on this side of eternity and that the Lord still has a purpose and plan to use you to bring glory and honor to His name, which begins by being grateful and thankful that your manger is not empty and clean.