We have this garden … well, let me be more honest, we have this patch of ground that my wife and I try to grow vegetables in, rather unsuccessfully I might add.  Anyway, this past Sunday as the temperature began rising and spring seemed right around the corner, I decided once again to have a go at our garden.  I hooked up the tiller to the tractor and began breaking up the ground.   The problem was that I have done this every year and it has never been enough.  Each year we plant seeds and grow weeds.

My wife has begged me for the last four years to fertilize the soil before we planted and I have just never found the time.  So this year I decided to give it a try.  I called up my good friend Todd.  Todd raises a few head of cattle every year and has always told me that he had manure that we could have if we chose.  As I spoke to Todd, I told him I would come over to his place with my truck and a trailer and pick up some of his natural ‘Miracle Grow’.  However, my friend would have none of it.  He insisted on delivering some to our house.  That was about 3:00 in the afternoon.

6:30 PM Todd finally arrives with my manure.  Not a pick up load, but a dump truck load!  It seems he doesn’t use this truck that often, and it took him a while to get it fired up and then loaded with literally tons of fertilizer mixed with mulch that he has been composting for the last three years.  As he begins to dump the load, his truck dies.  ‘Fuel problem, I think,’ Todd informs me.  He is forced to climb under this large truck, out in the middle of a field, disassemble the fuel filter and a few more parts, add compressed air to his fuel tank, and an hour and a half later, finally get his truck started again.  He then happily spreads the manure on my freshly tilled garden and heads home.  The time is almost 8:30 PM.

That’s when it dawns on me.  Todd has just spent the last 5 hours of his Sunday afternoon, loading and dumping manure on our hobby garden.   And I, I am humbled and honored to have such a friend. 

Jesus taught that the second great command was to love our neighbors as ourselves.   I’m not sure even I would have spent that much time on myself, but Todd had sacrificed his day to serve me.  At Knight Vision Ministries, our motto is ‘to have eyes to see.’ 

I think I saw something pretty Knightly this last Sunday afternoon.


To the King,

David