New ministry this week!! WEEDING! We're partnering with a local pastor whose church is in the process of building a retreat center. It's in the very beginning stages, so they've just torn down some of the old building that was falling apart, but until they get more supplies and money, all they can really do is landscape around the building, hence the weeding. Some of us have machetes, some have pickaxes or hoes to get the nastier ones, but for the most part we've been crawling up the side of this mountain, weeding by hand as we go.
The thing I love about weeding is that in addition to being very therapeutic, it is also very applicable to our walk with God. Or maybe there's just something in the dirt gets inhaled and gives you an overactive imagination. Either way, here goes:
The weeds are the things in our lives that keep popping up that are in need of refining. An example in my life would be pride. It's a struggle. All the time. I think I’m done with it- I think it's been uprooted and pulled from the ground- but then it springs up in me again, just like a stinkin' weed. Anyways, if you don't get the whole weed, including the roots, it'll just come back. Sometimes it looks like a just a small weed, no big deal, but the roots actually go very deep and have a lot of long, wiry roots that are being very destructive.
Weeds suffocate the good things in the garden. They steal the nutrients needed by the plants you actually want, and those plants become less beautiful and less healthy as a result. When you weed around the wanted plants, sometimes the weeds are so close that they disturb the roots of the wanted plant. In essence, you have to hurt the plant you want in order to get these weeds out. But when you get the weeds out, smooth out the soil, and water the plants again, the garden looks so healthy and refreshed, and it was worth it for everybody involved (except the weed) to go through the pain of weeding.
I don't know if this makes a lot of sense to anybody else, but it makes a lot of sense to me. As I was weeding the other day, the Lord told me to ask forgiveness from a person who had wounded me deeply in the past. I didn't want to. I started to defend my side of the story (like I usually do), but then the Lord called me out on it and told me that asking for forgiveness means to swallow your pride and to recognize your wrongdoings towards the other person, and that I'm not going to get to the place of humility that I desire without swallowing my pride. Swallowing your pride hurts- it's like pulling out a weed. I know there are going to be so many more times in my life where pride springs up and I'll have to suck it up and pull it out again, but it is so worth it to live in the spiritual health God wants for us. He is our Master Gardener, and He who began a good work in us will finish it- even to the last weed.
