Proverbs 14:4  Have you ever been in a barn where several animals are kept?  It stinks, doesn’t it?  Our verse for today talks about cow manure and the mess that animals make.  Back in Solomon’s day, they didn’t have tractors.  They had oxen to pull their wagons and plows and to do all of the heavy work.  Oxen were powerful animals that were able to haul more than many men could carry.  But they were messy.  The room in the barn where the oxen were kept was called the crib.  The farmers threw straw on the dirt floor to absorb the manure and the urine (pooh and pee) and once a day they would muck the crib (shovel out the manure covered straw).  We sure are learning a bunch nasty of farmer words today!  In our verse for today, Solomon is saying that we have two choices: we can have no smell and mess in our clean barn or we can have a messy, smelly barn where powerful oxen stay, who get a lot of work done.  We like the work that the oxen do, but the smell and the mess come with them.  It's like the cause and effect we talked about yesterday.  That is the way it is with life: you have to take the bad with the good.  Solomon is reminding us that if we want to get work done, we just have to put up with the smelly mess.  Just remember, after you work hard and get real dirty, you can always clean up and look good again.  I like to work hard, get sweaty and dirty, and then throw those dirty clothes in the hamper and take a refreshing shower.  Then I feel nice and clean.  And I feel good inside because I have gotten a lot of work done.  But then there are those smelly work clothes in the hamper.  More work to do – laundry work!