We don’t have a little snow shovel. But we have a big dustpan, the kind that you use if you are cleaning up a shop.

So when I went out to shovel snow the other day, I gave Ben the dustpan. He started scooping snow.

He scooped some onto the driveway where I had just shoveled a row. He scooped some onto the stalks of plants Nancy had cut back a couple months ago. “I’m hiding stuff.” He scooped some onto a pile in the yard. “I found grass!”

He did nothing to help me clear the driveway and the sidewalk.

From a snow removal cost-benefit perspective, the time Nancy spent bundling him into two layers of shirts, pants and snowpants, socks and slipper socks and boots, gloves and mittens, was wasted.

Apart from the fact that bundling looks a lot like conversation and hugs.

And the scooping was building skills and learning that snow is moveable. And conversation.

+++

I could now turn to a spiritual lesson. I could suggest that we spend so much time thinking we are working for God, doing amazing stuff in church. When all the while God’s doing the work. And the stuff we think is so important will melt but the time together won’t.

But Ben’s not a spiritual lesson, nor is he an unproductive shoveler. He’s an almost three-year-old. And I’m not a spiritual lesson or a productive shoveler. We are living and loved people.

Perhaps this week, or today, I can rest in the living and loving. And not work so hard at finding lessons.