Writings By Phil

When I was young, I wanted to be a cowboy! I wanted to have my own horse and chase cows and do rodeo and all the other fun stuff that cowboys do. In my eight- and nine-year-old imagination, hard work and lean times were not part of the equation. My father ran a ranch for my grandfather and had our family stayed there, my dream might have become a reality.

In the summer after my fourth year of grade school we moved to the city. My father believed that, to God, the pursuit of the souls of men and seeing them mature in Christ was far more important than chasing cows and fattening them up for market. We left the ranch and my aspiration to become a cowhand all but died.

When I graduated from high school, I went off to Canada to attend Bible School and my father and mother moved to rural Kansas where my dad became the pastor of a small-town church. In the summer months I went home to Kansas.

One summer I worked at a feed yard, earning money so that I could return to school. I loaded my truck with thousands of pounds of feed and dumped it into the concrete feed troughs for the waiting cattle to eat. The cows were placed into their pens in lots of 50 and 100, and I fed upwards of 1000 cows each day.

As I drove my rounds, I would often see the cowboys riding their horses from pen to pen checking the cows, looking for sick animals and other problems. Oh, how I wished that I could be one of them! The cowboys, not the animals!

Often, when I finished feeding the cows, I got to help the cowboys. I enjoyed working with them. I sometimes got to run the dipping vat, baptizing each cow in a solution that would kill all kinds external parasites that caused skin and hoof problems. It was always fun to help when it was time to medicate and brand the cows. Maybe I couldn’t be a real cowboy, but working so close with cows, I could, at least, smell like one!

I fed the cows for weeks and the time came to tell them goodbye. They were ready for market! The cowboys asked me to help, and I was delighted. We did not weigh the cows one at a time, but pushed as many as we could onto a big scale enclosed in a corral made of steel pipe. My job was to get them all onto the scale and shut the gate behind them. We ran about 20 cows down the lane and onto the scale at a time. Once the cows were weighed, they were herded off the scale, up the ramp and into a double decked, 18 wheeled, semi-truck.

I stood beside the open gate as the first group of cows ran by me. As soon as the last one passed, I started to close the gate, whopping and hollering, waving my free arm to hurry them along, while pushing the gate hard against the back ends of the stragglers. “This is going to be fun!” I thought. Cow bodies pushed closer and closer together in the confined space as the gate closed behind them.

These cows were fat and lazy. They had spent weeks eating the best of food and their only exercise was walking to the food trough for more. Packed like beef in a can, their bulging bellies pressed tightly together, the mayhem started. A green geyser of very fresh cow manure shot from a cow on my right and covered my sleeve. I jumped out of the way only to become a target for a cow on my left. Now, I had it all over my leg, too. “This is gross.” I thought, “No wonder the cowboys gave me this job!” Or was this the revenge of the bovines?

As the afternoon advanced towards quitting time, each new group of cows shot at me with everything they had. I was covered with disgusting green mud down my arms, and from my chest to the soles of my boots. It was loathsome stuff, but I reasoned with myself that it was all part of my workday, and besides, it was “just chewed up alfalfa and corn stalks!’ What was so bad about those?

Finally, the last cow was weighed and on the truck. Quitting time never seemed so good! Still caked in a thick layer of cow dung, I walked towards my car. Again, I was thinking that green gunk all over me was quite nasty and I didn’t want that stuff all over my upholstery. Alas, there was no place to clean up. I didn’t have clean clothes to change into, anyway. I reasoned with myself hoping to to justify my predicament in my mind so I could get in my car and go home. I convinced myself, “It is only chewed up grass! What is so bad about that?”

I got into my car and drove over the dirt roads towards home. In the short jaunt towards town, I formulated a plan. I would quietly enter our house, sneak up to my room, fetch clean clothes and go back downstairs to the bathroom, shower, and clean myself up. Clean myself up? Yep! That was what I was going to do!

However, my mother saw or smelled me coming, I don’t know which. She met me at the door, blocking my way into her house. No, I was not coming into her house the way I was! Instead, she made me go stand in the yard. She got the garden hose and sprayed cold water on me until all the green was washed away. Only then could I enter her house, take my shower, and put on clean clothes.

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I was a sinner, all covered in shame,
Lost and defiled, with no merit to claim.
But somehow, God still loved me, in spite of my sins. Saved me, He redeemed me and He cleansed me within. John W Peterson

There is something worse than being covered with cow manure. Sin! Jeremiah 17:9 tells us that our heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. Another translation says our heart is beyond cure! Isiah 64:6 tells us that the best we can do is, to God’s eyes, nothing but filthy rags. Some versions of the Bible translate that like rags that come off an oozing, festering sore. That is gross! Romans 3:23 states that all of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God. None of us can make it to Heaven because of our sin!

We all do bad things, deeds that don’t please God. We might even admit it and say, “I’ve sinned,” but we justify it thinking, “It was just a white lie! I’m not so bad! ” Or, “That guy over there is a bigger sinner than I am!” We think we can clean ourselves up so that God will accept us. Others think that if the good they do in this life outweighs the bad things they do, then God will let them into his Heaven.

Remember our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked. Our heart doesn’t tell us the truth. We can’t make it on our own. We must do it God’s way!

Titus3:5 tells us that salvation is not by works of righteousness (the good things we do) that He saves us, but because of His mercy. We must come to God his way. Just as I had to stand in the yard and let my mother wash the filth off my clothes to her satisfaction before she would let me enter her house, so God says we must be washed clean by the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ. 1 John 1:7 tells us that the blood of Jesus Christ his Son, cleanses us from all sin. Only then can we enter Heaven and spend eternity with God!

Lay aside your garments that are stained with sin
And be washed in the blood of the Lamb
There’s a fountain flowing for the soul unclean
O, be washed in the blood of the Lamb!

Are you washed in the blood
In the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?
Are your garments spotless, are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb? Alan Jackson