O Lord, I give joyful thanks for the lawn equipment you have given me.

After bringing home the shiny new Toro Mower and the Stihl Kombi-System Trimmer yesterday, and putting them in my shed, I could feel Your grace wash over me. And I sat for a moment and basked in this glory and contemplated the fact that the trimmer's engine can actually power a leaf blower along with several other attachments, including an edger, a cultivator, a hedge trimmer, and a power sweeper, and my heart was filled with wonder by all of these glorious instruments and the thought that one day they might all populate my shed and how this hope was a testament of Your love for men everywhere, O Lord, and of Your eternal genius.

And thank you, Lord, for delivering unto me an angel by the name of Fred, who owns the lawn equipment store down the road a ways, and who, in his thick Jersey accent, patiently coached me in the proper way to use these divine instruments of lawn maintenance. When he revved the engine of the mower in the parking lot, I could feel Your power fill my heart and understood that enlightenment was near. I grunted to Fred. And he grunted back. Because in our heightened state of spiritual awareness, language no longer mattered. Words were only obstacles to the exaltation of Your magnificent glory. Instead, we communicated like our forefathers, directly through simple, mono-syllabic sounds. And it was good and it was righteous.

And bringing that mower home, O Lord, in the bed of my truck—it's handlebar raised high and tall and shining in the New Jersey sun—was perhaps the proudest moment of my life. Could a man hope for something greater? And later, as I was filling my new red gasoline jugs at the Exxon, the attendant actually let me do the honors—which I didn't think was legal in Jersey—and I spilled a little on my hand. But I didn't wash it off, Lord, because the sweet smell of it filled my heart with gladness and brought back memories of my childhood, mowing lawns in the armpit wetness of Houston town. And as I drove home I scratched my beard with that hand so that the smell would embed itself there and follow me throughout the day and let others know that I have received this gift of love. And that I had been blessed with Your Holy Mercy.

Finally, Lord, I ask that you keep my neighbor's hearts from filling with envy at the sight of my new powerful lawn-care tools. And in turn, I will do my best not to covet that which I do not yet have and to not be jealous of A---, my next-door neighbor with the amazing green lawn.

Amen.

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