Summer was a great time to earn a little money to help with school clothes and shoes and the most obvious task was babysitting the neighbor kids. I did quite a bit of this when I was preteen age but as I grew older I was eager for more money and willing to work for it.
Walking beans was a job I did for daddy at first and then later I walked for the sharecropper who farmed our land. He paid really well and believe it or not I was excited to get up before dawn and brave the cold and wet beans to earn a paycheck. We usually worked at least until noon or when the field was clean. It was plenty warm and dry by the time we finished. Unfortunately there were only so many beans and the job ended too soon in the summer.
When I was 14 or 15, I had the opportunity to clean house for a shut-in lady who became a good friend. I would clean her house every other weekend. I learned responsibility and how to take pride in my work. It always felt good to complete the job well and to her pleasing. This job led to another cleaning job for a woman who just came home from the hospital. I was her caregiver and cleaned her house and then spent time helping prepare meals and helping her around the house. She taught me to cook salmon, something I'd never seen before. She was quite a talker so I learned a lot about life by assisting her for a few days a week for several weeks. Surprisingly, my parents trusted me to drive to these ladies homes before I had my license. It was just a few miles away and I usually stayed on the gravel roads and never had an incident.
These little jobs taught me responsibility to others and prepared me to take a 'real' job at a book store when I was in high school. God uses even little things like walking beans and cleaning house to mold us into the person he wants us to be.
"He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:6 NIV).
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