Very few people will raise their hand when asked if they genuinely enjoy weeding. It hurts your back and knees, gets you all dirty and gross, and usually is in the scorching heat of summer. It’s difficult and very tedious. It’s not a fun thing to do. But, as every good gardener knows, it’s a necessity in order to have a beautiful, healthy garden. Weeds take over healthy plants and slowly kill them. They suck the nutrients out of the soil and give no fruit to make up for it. You can’t have healthy plants in the presence of weeds.
As I stood in a school courtyard for 6 hours, hedging more bushes than I would have liked, I had plenty of time to contemplate my life. The one thing the Lord kept bringing me back to: roots. Roots of weeds and roots of flowers. All jumbled together to create what is: my life. Every single person makes up a garden, their past becoming the trees of the present and their choices bearing the fruit of their futures. People can either tend to their garden, go through their past and dig into what makes them into who they are, or not. But either way, there will be consequences and it all comes down to the roots. Weeds can be maintained, but until they are taken out at the root and pulled out completely, they will continue to be pests in the garden. Whether evident right away or not, weeds have a tendency to strangle good plants way beneath the surface. Secret to the eye, the weed ultimately is the plant that will break through – as is true in every single person’s heart. Whether evident to the eye or not, people’s pasts DO affect their present. They do shape you into who you are, but if the plants of their garden are surrounded by bitterness, resentment, unforgiveness, the beauty of the garden gets covered up and rotten fruit is the only product. What’s inside always comes out. The question is, what’s on the inside?
Here’s the good news: the good gardener that God is, He gets on His hands and knees in the midst of the blazing sun and takes out each weed – one by one. He loves every single person enough to put in the hard work and work through every past pain, every insecurity, every lie. He isn’t satisfied with a careless garden that was created to resemble Eden. He designed our hearts to reflect His glory, and no amount of weeds is going to stop Him from fighting for that. The thing about God, however, is that He won’t do it without our choice. We also have to choose to put in the hard work and get a little muddy next to Him. We also have to choose to fight and go through the hard rocks of our past. But no matter how difficult, no matter how tiresome, the end result is beautiful. The end result is beautiful because you, perfectly and wonderfully made, were made to be beautiful.
Quick life update: we are in Costa Rica for one more month (lovingggg it here). This week, we are helping the boys team at a day care.
Daily schedule:
(Mon):
8:00a-8:30a: breakfast
9:00a-10a: weekly chores
10a-4p: activation day (teachings)
12p: lunch
(Tues-Fri):
6:00a-6:45a: wake up, quiet time (aka pure quiet bliss)
6:50a-7:15ish: breakfast (eggs, pancakes, or cereal)
8:30: walk to ministry
9:00a-4p: ministry at the day care (manual labor – cleaning, yard work)
12p-1p: lunch/break
4:00p: walk back home
5:00p-5:30ish: dinner
5:30ish-6:30ish: dinner clean-up
7p-8p: Team time
(Sat-Sun):
off
Thank you for the continued prayers! Wifi permitting, I will post a photo blog asap 🙂
