“The Plant Lady.” So says the mug one of my customers brought me when I was sick with that thing that’s going around. Yes, I guess that’s what I am; I sell plants because my yard produces so many of them.
In a good week during the growing season my little cottage industry has netted our family more than a part-time job. My “Yard Boy” (husband) thinks it should BE my job.
And what a fun job it would be! I get to meet the nicest people, I’m outdoors away from concentrated germs, and I get to do something I love to do; raising, nurturing, and propagating plants. One huge drawback is the issue of having to count (and account for) every penny that comes in or goes out of the proverbial cookie jar. And by “proverbial,” I mean almost literal.
Do we need to buy a pizza because we got so busy with yard work there’s no time to cook? Grab some money from the jar. Do I need more potting soil? Grab some money from the jar. Do we need to buy beekeeping equipment? Grab some money from the jar.
At the end of the year, when it’s time to figure up how to render to Caesar the things that are Ceaesar’s, the math should add up. How much came in, how much went out, and how much of the outgo was really garden expense? Ugh. Well, that just takes the fun right out of gardening. Math!
This brings to mind a memory of a full week of doing something similar on a bigger scale. A lifetime ago, I worked as a secretary the president of a manufacturing company. Truth is, Mr. Doran didn’t give me much to do, so I filled out my day helping out either on the switchboard or in bookkeeping.
The company accountant could not reconcile the books without coming up with a two cent difference over and over. I was tasked with finding it, and it took many grueling days of checking and double-checking. Hours and hours were spent adding up long columns of figures on a manual adding machine, and not one of those fancy new “ten-keys.”
Now, for those of you not familiar with accounting, a two cent difference is rarely an issue about two pennies. It could be a $3,496.32 amount not entered, combined with two other entries on the other side…say, in the amounts of $2,236,75 and $1,259.59.
Though I understood why it was important to do so, It still intrigued me that the company paid me a week’s wages to try to find two cents.
We humans cannot fathom why it was necessary to send God’s own Son to earth to suffer and die for our sins. We can’t be THAT far off of God’s requirement for righteousness, can we? Well, in fact, yes; we can and we are.
“But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear” (Isaiah 59:2, NASB).
God’s complete, perfect righteousness cannot abide the presence of unrighteousness. It may look like “small change” to us, but to a perfect being it is enough to separate us from Him. He requires perfection. Thankfully, He also supplies it through the blood of His own beloved son! It was never something we could do for ourselves.
Reconciliation requires an agreement, just as those books I pored over required agreement. Thanks be to the Savior who came to set the accounts right!
“And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach” (Colossians 1:21,22).