Followers

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Roots and shoots

I did half an hour of gardening after school. Half an hour of tugging and pulling at knee high grass in the flower borders was my limit today. It beats going to the gym and costs less too! Sweat poured in rivers down my face. Spiders and beetles scattered to every point of the compass. I found things I thought I had lost, that I had used to wedge open the bedroom window, that had obviously not been big enough for the job, and had fallen into the flower border below!

I seem to remember a few years ago, a friend of mine tackling the front border. Her attention to detail is to be admired, and no weed survived her blitz and no weed root either. She very carefully traced back the root of a dandelion. It took her ages to uncover it, endless amounts of determination and patience. Laid on the ground afterwards it was a good six feet in length with a number of shoots off in various directions. How much easier her task would have been if it had not been given permission over the previous four months to grow unhindered!

Why do I do it to myself? I ignore the weeds when they are little and then burst a blood vessel trying to get them out when they are big! I just don't find the time, or the inclination to garden. Suddenly it's so overrun I don't know where to begin to start to tidy it up! The size of the job is overwhelming!

Help is just a phone call away! We have the number of a gardener! He knows what he is doing and has all the right tools!

There is a spiritual lesson to be learned here. The spiritual weeds like envy and pride are much easier to deal with when they are just tiny shoots. Once they are well established with deep roots and shedding seeds all over the place they are not easy top pull up. Praise God that help is just a prayer away! Jesus knows what is he doing and has all the resources of heaven to help.

3 comments:

Shelley L. MacKenzie said...

Great post, and amen to what you said!

Found your blog via Faith Writers (I go there too) and thought I'd visit and say hello!

Unknown said...

I found you through faithwriters. I've written a few articles on pulling weeds and faith myself.
Have a great day!

~Jan said...

I don't garden; I figure I can buy beans at the grocery for 89 cents, and I didn't have to deal with dirt, bugs or weeds. To me, it's worth it. Nice spiritual application, though.

I clicked here from Faith Writers--there seem to be quite a few of us bloggers there!

You'll find that my own blog is lighter than my Faith Writers stuff, but if you dig around a bit, you'll find quite a few posts with spiritual applications, much like yours.