My first real job was almost unpaid, apart from the pleasure I was supposed to acquire from doing it and the few pounds that dad threw my was after it was completed. I must have been about fifteen or sixteen at the time and summer jobs were more scarce than Newcastle United trophies, so I spent the sunny days and long evenings in giving our yard a makeover. The buildings were mostly of mud and stone walls that needed a fresh covering of whitewash, a mixture of soft lime and water, every couple of years, while the corrugated tin roofs always benefited from a layer of tar or bitumen to keep out the rust. After that, it was only a matter of refreshing a long line of black tar that was about eighteen inches high and ran along the base of the whole length of the housing, then finishing the whole thing off with a coat of red oxide paint on the doors and a lick of tar on the hinges and handles. The buildings in total, ran for a length of about thirty to forty yards on one side and faced directly across on to some slightly more 'modern' brick buildings that still had similar doors and corrugated roofs waiting for painting. It was a mammoth task without even going near the large hay shed that enclosed one end of the yard and whose corrugated roof and sides presented an imposing spectacle, towering over the rest of the low rise buildings. I never realised how high it was until I extended the double ladder almost to its limit one day, just to paint the spouting that circumnavigated the top of the vertical sides. What made the overall job more difficult, however, was that both whitewash and tar have the distinct property to burn skin but that particular summer, the sun seemed to shine every day I was painting and sometimes you just can't avoid ending up with some of these substances on your arms, hands and face and the sun just accentuates the problem. Anyway, mum and dad were never far away and I didn't do it all by myself.Next port of call was as an egg cleaner / gatherer for a local firm that had several hen houses nearby. It was a more simple job and apart from the obvious smell, that I didn't notice after a while , but everyone who met me did, all I had to do was lift the oval objects, give them a quick brush with some fine sandpaper and place them in egg trays. Once or twice a day the feeders needed to be pushed along their tramlines up and down the houses so that the hens had enough nutrition to keep laying, but two other things I'll always remember. First, the captive audience of hundreds of birds, living in dim light, in their little prisons, for almost their entire lives and the constant low murmur of hen chat that pervaded the whole house throughout the day and night, though nobody inside really ever knew what time it was. But also, after a batch of hens had stopped laying and been removed and the pest control guy had come in and done his stuff before as new batch was installed, that crunching feeling under your feet as you went indoors some hours later to be met by a deep carpet of dead flies that covered every inch of walking space and that you had never really noticed when they were alive.
After that it was on to working in a potato breding section for the Department of Agriculture for a couple of summers, during which we spent most of the time in fields, collecting pollen from potato flowers, with a three inch hypodermic needle that was carefully scraped along an anther and its powdery content either deposited in a small glass bottle or spread over the stigma of another flower. By the time I had worked on a farm for three or four more summers, full time employment was beckoning, but in those years I had learned valuable lessons, that no job is too difficult, too boring, too mundane or even too poorly paid as long as I was willing to do it, working and earning a few pounds at the same time.
And the same applies in the jobs that God asks me to do for Him for I know that He will never give me something to do or put me in a position that He hasn't been in Himself and as along as I am working for Him, I will 'serve the Lord with gladness' knowing that He is storing up for me 'treasures in heaven.' But serving God is not just a summer vacation job, or something I do for a short while that brings personal satisfaction or rids me of guilt. No, it is a lifelong commitment to taking up that cross and following wherever He may lead. It's also a time to watch out for the fiery darts of satan as he tries to deflect me from the purposes God has set in place and , just as the flies and the aromas in the hen houses reminded me, the devil is constantly there even when I don't see him. That's why I, once again, can take great comfort in Joshua 1v9 when he says 'Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.' I guess you could call this job hunting for Jesus.
