WEEDS

I am not a gardener.... but my Dad is. When I visited them in Oregon, one morning I asked Dad if there was anything around the house that he needed done. He mentioned that there were some weeds in the ditch in front of the house that he needed to have cut down.

So I grabbed the weedeater and took care of the weeds. It took 5 minutes... Following that I asked if there was anything else, and he mentioned the weeds around the perimeter of the garden. Dad had taken care of the weeds around his corn, and squash and other plants. But not so much around the perimeter. So I took the weedeater and went at it. That took me quite a bit longer than five minutes. They were thick and they were high. There were things hidden in the weeds that were hard and sharp. So it took some time, but eventually they got taken care of. ( Thank goodness for a heavy duty weedeater!)

I think one of the greatest dangers in life are weeds. Even Jesus talked about weeds ( thorns) in his parable of the sower. ( Matthew 13) Some seed falls among the weeds which grow up around the fruit of the seed and choke the life out of it. Jesus describes that in Verse 22 "What was sown among the thorns (weeds) is the man who hears the word but the worries of life and deceitfulness of wealth choke it making it unfruitful."

The difference between the weeds of a garden and the weeds of a life is the fact that we can be so busy doing good things in one area of life that we ignore the weeds growing in another. On the surface, our lives may look pretty good... things are going well.... we are productive in our eyes and others... but all along there are weeds. Nobody sets out to have a garden or a life full of weeds. It just happens.

Weeds show up in our marriage, and sometimes it is easier to ignore them... or just hope that they will go away.

Weeds show up in our spiritual lives. We may notice some inappropriate attitudes, or words that come out of our mouth that are out of character...and we just hope that it will get better..

Weeds show up in our relationships with friends. Maybe they say something that bugs us, or we just get tired of being accountable and we kind of pull away from them. It is easier to live unaccountable lives.

EVERYONE HAS THE POTENTIAL FOR WEEDS!

This is on my mind because someone that I care very deeply for has let some weeds pile up in his life and it is choking him. Slowly but surely his life has become less of a garden and more of a pile of weeds. And it is costing him dearly. The problem is that he has become so comfortable with the weeds that I am not sure he wants to go back to the garden. He simply can not see beyond the weeds. It is a terrible place to be.

So for those of you that read this, let me encourage you ( as I will myself), to be ruthless about the weeds. Tear them away from the garden of your life. Watch very closely your life. When something shows up, don't ignore it, don't hope it will just go away. Don't say, " I will get to it later." DEAL WITH IT! For if you don't you will find yourself in a mess.

One of the reasons that the weeds around the perimeter of my dads garden were so difficult to get rid of was because they had been let go for so long. The longer you and I wait to take action, the harder it is.

Painful? Sure it can be, especially if you have done any weeding lately. Threatening? Absolutely, especially if you have gotten used to the weeds and what life feels like with them. Destructive? Well, why do they call them weeds? Look no further than the defintion of a weed.

" a plant that is not valued where it is growing and is usually of vigorous growth; especially one that tends to overgrow or choke out more desirable plants ."

That is what weeds do... and if you don't control and mange them, it really hurts. So with Jesus' help, I am on the lookout for weeds in my life. I hope you will be too.

Blessings

Charlie