Clean Mangers

Where there are no oxen, the manger is empty, but from the strength of an ox come abundant harvests. (Proverbs 14:4)

          Have you ever worked on a farm with cattle, even for a few days? I’m a city girl, but my aunt and uncle had a dairy farm, so I’ve walked through barns. They’re filthy. I don’t think theirs was especially filthy, but when you have more than two hundred bovines, it’s just reality. In my experience, even the most docile cow can also be obstinate. In fact, part of the reason bulls are castrated (thus manufacturing an ox) is because it makes them more docile. As I think about this verse and life, one of the ideas that comes to mind deals with people being the oxen of our society. I know, we’re technologically advanced, and we have machines that do a lot of heavy labor for us. But having worked in retail for a number of years, it always seemed to me that the goal was to reduce the number of people while demanding greater output. The corporation wanted good, strong, docile oxen to do their work for them, but they wanted a clean manger. Starved oxen aren’t good, strong. or docile. 
          The same can be said of our society. We want hugely abundant harvests. We want the sickly, crippled calves to receive just as much food as the big oxen. In fact, we want to take from our oxen to feed the sickly, crippled calves. And, we want clean mangers, and clean barns. The problem is, when you take food from the oxen, you reduce the oxen’s ability to do the work that results in the abundant harvest, which means that ultimately, both the oxen and the calves starve.
          I’m not saying to mistreat the sickly, crippled calves. But the way to strengthen them is not by weakening the oxen. It’s by coaxing the bull-headed oxen to do more work, providing for a bigger harvest, and giving them the food they need to do that work. Cleaning out their manger hurts everyone.