Our yard suffered with us spending last summer in Germany. Neighbors did an AMAZING job keeping the front yard alive during a drought, but the backyard became infested with weeds. Weeds like I’ve never seen.
That means this summer, I’ve spent pockets of time outside yanking weeds out by as much root as I can. Monday night we had a great rain, so Tuesday I was outside pulling a small mountain of dandelions and other, unnamed weeds. (The pile is really more impressive than the photo shows)
It was a hot process. My back began to ache. I even got a little sweaty — amazing considering it wasn’t quite seventy degrees outside. And for every weed I pulled, ten waited. I’d make a little progress and then look around and wonder what I’d accomplished.
It made me think about faith. I have pockets of sin. Areas of character that blemish an otherwise green field. If I leave the sin in place, it grows, the roots go deeper, and it pushes out the Christ-like areas in my life. If I ignore them, before long my life is covered in sin.
But when I’m willing to do the work, God comes alongside me. His Spirit gives me the strength and courage to keep pulling just one more weed. Life may be a process of pulling one more weed, but I believe it will reveal more of Christ each time.
So let’s look for those times when conditions are ripe. The grounds wet, the tools are at hand, and let’s dig deeper into Christ so we can yank out the roots of sin and self. Anyone want to join me?
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I used to have a large strawberry patch in my backyard. It was there when I bought my house. The bad thing was there was also plenty of bindweed among the plants. One summer when pulling bindweed, I thought of how like sin it is. Bindweed has a pretty flower (sin can often look attractive). Its roots go very deep so it’s almost impossible to just pull it out and be done with it(sin’s roots often go deep and we have to keep fighting sin). If we don’t pull out the bindweed, it twines itself among other plants and can choke them out (if we don’t get rid of sin, it can overtake good and choke it out as well). God taught me a lot that year!
I love that, Pam. A great example of how sin can be beautiful and attractive, yet choke us.
I’m not much of a gardener — well, I’m not into gardening at all. I’d like to be, but it doesn’t help that I kill common house plants.
But I digress.
Weeds.
We’ve got a few growing in our yard.
And I can ignore them because, well, my husband manages the yard. Not my territory. But on occasion, I notice and think, “Wow, that doesn’t look good. Need to get out here and weed.”
And then I go back to ignoring it all.
And I can be that way about sin too.
I can notice it … be convicted of it … and then go back to ignoring it. And repeat, repeat, repeat.
The only problem is, just like weeds, the sin problem gets worse and worse until I’m willing to do something about it.
Great post, Cara!
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It is so easy to ignore sin. My sin never looks as big and ugly as another person’s sin — at least to me! But boy, it can take over if I let it slide. THanks for commenting, Beth! Appreciate your insights and honesty!