You have, no doubt, heard the expression “keeping up with the Joneses.” That is exactly how I got a part-time job once. Let me explain. When I was attending seminary in Mill Valley, California, I was hired as a gardener by a commercial airline pilot and his wife. Everyone in his upscale Sausalito neighborhood had a gardener—it was a local status symbol. How do I know that? Because my job was mostly to show up and look busy. My employers had an organic garden in their backyard, but they would not allow me to do anything in their Edenic little plot. Summer was approaching, and there was a real job for me to tackle—scrubbing the green gunk off the lining of the backyard pool. The pool was about forty feet long, fifteen feet wide, three feet deep on the shallow end, sloping down to about twelve feet at the deepest point. It had not been covered through the winter, and there was a nasty, thick, green slime puddle at the deep end. The privileged lady of the house was relaxing poolside, sipping her beverage of choice, banteringly debating philosophy and theology with the naïve, radical little seminary student… me. I was feverishly scrubbing the lining of the pool with a very soapy scouring pad. The intelligent young lad in the pool talked as the suds silently crept down the wall of the pool toward my unsuspecting rubber-soled shoes. Yeah, you see what’s coming, don’t you? Well, I didn’t. So, the soapy solution oozed its way well past my feet, and when I attempted to reposition my feet… they were repositioned alright—about five feet over my head. My head, with the rest of me unwillingly following, was thrown into a skid like an out-of-control car on ice, face first, into the nasty green slime. I can only imagine what a treat it was for her to watch me take a little dip in her pool and come out looking like I was covered in guacamole dip. I was hosed off and changed into her 6’4” husband’s plaid Bermuda shorts, which were ankle-length on me. I learned a lesson that day about how not to wash a pool: if you lose your footing, bad things can happen. The same is true in life. Make certain you are standing firmly in the truth. Stand steadfastly in Christ. Plant your feet on the Word of God—and stubbornly stand.
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