Lesson from Gardener

A few weeks ago it was strongly manifested that I should take care of the gardening on the premises where the church is meeting, the literature office is operating, and where I and my family are residing. It hardly dawned on me to take care of the ambiance of the premises I have been living for a decade now. But through circumstance, it has been made clearer and clearer the need for landscaping the surrounding with greens and proper gardening. For this, the Lord also sovereignly arranged the situation in such a way that the needed money for the entire work of gardening was also provided. Besides, a brother's simple comment one day touched me so deeply that I took it as the Lord's speaking and took a firm decision to take action immediately. Therefore, I hired a gardener to do the works I felt needed to be done.

One by one, the work has been carried out, from cleaning the side lawn to the back lawn, fencing works of the boundary, trimming the overgrown fruit trees, landscaping the lawn with green grass, and the front part cleaning and gardening too with trimming of the trees; all works were carried out one by one. For every work I asked the gardener to do, I had to pay him. He was very convincing that what I thought was not needed for payment I had to pay up for the work.  On the one hand, he did the work, yet on the other hand, I felt he tried to extract as much money from me. I did not want to fight and argue over money matters so I gave in to all his demands for labor charges. Though I hired him for a monthly wage, so far I have been paying him for every work that I asked him to do. Well, I counted it fair enough as long as the works were done.

Herein I learned a lesson of doing work with a price. Anything worthy always comes with a price. I felt very bad when the gardener had to charge more for all his work and I was forced to bargain which did not yield any result. In fact, I wanted to let him go after the ongoing project, but later I realized that he need to be kept for the maintenance of the entire gardening work on the premise. Out of sympathy for his family I also gifted him some old clothes and shoes, but these he counted as charity and not a part of the work I hired him for.  Well, this is the one I have for now, and have to manage with it, as long as the work is being done.

Three things I learned from this experience are noteworthy: 

Money is mammon and needs to be handled with utmost care. Use money wisely for productive purposes yet never love the money itself. 

What needs to be done must be done at whatever price it costs. Just for the costs, do not delay the work. 

Dealing with people, especially people who love money needs wisdom from the Lord. Money is so evil that it can blind a man for the gaining of it in whichever way.

This simple experience with a gardener opened my eyes to see the true value of money and how much Satan has utilized money to drive people to say anything and even do anything for money. I hate money more and more having seen its misuse. Though I need them myself, I should never love money. 

For the love of money is a root of all evils, because of which some, aspiring after money, have been led away from the faith and pierced themselves through with many pains. 1 Timothy 6:10