Sometimes I learn some of the strongest spiritual lessons when I’m outside. There’s something about being in God‘s beautiful creation that helps me to stop thinking about my own issues and open my eyes to the bigger picture. I was pulling in weeds in my garden a short time ago. During the previous week, I started pulling weeds that had been left for two years. Unfortunately for the gardener, the weeds were three foot high with roots forming a woven mat under the soil. The best I could do was pull up the top part and lay flattened cardboard on top to try to choke out the intense root system. It looked like a mess and I still don’t know if it will work.
But recently I was weeding in the next garden bed where the weeds were small with hardly a grasp into the soil. They lifted with a slight tug and were far less of a workout to remove than the well-established weeds. A thought came to me about the weeds in our life – mental, emotional, or spiritual or all of the above, things in our life that harm us that sometimes we just can’t let go of. It happens to all of us. Sometimes it’s our stubbornness or our busy lives but whatever the reason, those weeds root themselves until it gets really hard to get rid of them. We become used to them and rationalize their presence or just forget they are there. They interact with our thoughts, our words, and our behavior. Sometimes they create false messages that we believe. Whatever their effect, they get really hard to remove.
But what if we dug up those same weeds when they were small and when we first realized they were there? What if we took the time to dig up the roots that would come up easily? Or when we heard God’s whisper, we would stop and ask him to handle it for us? God knows when the weeds of our life grow tall and unmanageable and he’s right there to be our Savior once again when we fail. But wouldn’t it have been better to go to him sooner? To ask him to rid our minds and hearts of the things weighing us down and weaving a tangled mat that keeps us from our fullest self?
I look at the weeds in my life now and wonder, and I ask God to take over – the little weeds and the tall ones too, because only he can really do the right job as the Master Gardener. Consider Mark 4: 18-19 “Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.” Pray and ask God to help you let go of the weeds and allow him to make us full again.
Jessica Carlson, Coach
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