Weeding
by Kathy Brown on September 2nd, 2010
Perhaps you have spent some time this summer weeding a garden or landscaping bed. Recently I began to restore a portion of our shore to its original sandy texture by yanking the grasses and thorny intruders out. It was tough work, and it taught me a lesson.
At first plucking up a dandelion or thistle didn’t seem monumental. On the surface, every unwanted mess seemed a snap to clean up; but as I was wrestling with a stalk poking up through the beach, the more I pulled the tougher it got. Beneath the clod of dead leaves I could see the pure crystals I wanted. In order to sort through the layers, I had to dig down. A complex entanglement of runners lay beneath everything on top. They were so entwined that all of my strength could not budge them. Bracing myself, sweating and struggling to win the tug-of-war did nothing. Finally, I sat back and reflected. Although it would be time consuming and irritating, I must cut, untangle and follow each woody anchor to its end.
Sin is a lot like that. Many times outwardly we are able to cope and compensate for things in our lives that are hidden wounds caused by our own rebellion or by another’s toward us. Rather than deal with it, a web of denial or deception is woven over it. Sometimes in order to avoid admitting to sin we run away. Avoiding the initial pain of confronting our problems causes us to miss God’s healing and forgiveness. We turn somewhere else to try to get significance, satisfaction. We can look good on the outside, but underneath there is a complicated superficial root system substituting for the spiritual foundation we are meant to have.
Periodically, we need to work in the dirt. The last thing we need in our lives is a bouquet of weeds.
From Matthew 13:24:
“Jesus told them another parable: “The Kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.”
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