This month in Swazi, our ministry days have two parts: in the morning, we spend 2 & 1/2 hours weeding plots in the garden at the Anchor Center (the AIM base where we stay if i have yet to mention that) so the people who have been given the plots could start planting their crops today, then after lunch the 12 of us are split between going to care points and home visits. Our ministry day usually last 9-4, sometimes later, so it can make for a long day.
If you know me, you know that manual labor is not exactly my thing. I don't mind getting dirty, I love the feeling of accomplishment from seeing the results of my time, and I can make myself work hard when there is a task at hand, but if given the option I'd generally just rather do something more relational. For this reason, I honestly wasn't feeling particularly enthusiastic when we were told that our mornings would be spent in the garden.
But, I learn a little bit more everyday about how true Romans 8:28 is; even though in the very beginning of our time, the garden was just another job to me, God really changed my heart in that as every day out there I was either blessed with really great conversations with my teammates and squadmates, with great worship from my iPod, or with just small reminders from Him of how present He really is and how much He loves me.
Wednesday, as I was going about pulling out weeds, the Lord brought to my mind Ephesians 3:16-19-
"16I pray that out of His glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power together with all the Lord's people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19and to know this love surpasses knowledge-that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."
Think about the roots of a plant: the thicker the roots, the harder it is to separate it from the ground and the harder it is to pull up; it's impossible to tell how deep the roots really go until you get below the surface; and the roots are where the plants get practically all of their nutrients (except for sunlight of course). Basically, without the roots, the plant cannot survive, let alone grow and thrive.
This is exactly how the love of Christ should nourish us and sustain us, to the point where everything we need to survive, grow, and thrive, is found in Him. Instead of just "being a Christian" on the surface, claiming Jesus but lacking deep intimacy with Him, we should be devoting our lives to establishing ourselves in the love He has shown us on the cross. The deeper and thicker our roots are in Jesus, the harder it will be for the Enemy to attract and attack us and lure us out of His loving arms. Only by doing this will we be able to truly fulfill Paul's prayer for us in this passage, "to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." The difference, however, between a plant's roots in the ground and our roots in Christ is this: with enough work we can uproot a plant, or a weed in the case of the garden. But as Paul tells us in Romans 8:38-39,
"38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, or any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Where are your roots? Are they in the everlasting love and devotion that Christ showed us on the cross, or in something wordly and fleeting? Where do you get your nutrients and nourishment? In Jesus, who can never be separated from us, or in something the world offers that will soon fade away?
I love that the Lord used a garden of weeds, the ugliest and most unwanted of plants, to show me such a beautiful illustration of His love in our lives, just as He uses the most broken of people to do some of His most beautiful work.
