Weed and Feed

I spent some time playing in the dirt yesterday -- transplanting things that grew up out-of-place and investigating the best way to get rid of some nasty invasive ground cover. We got the lawn mowed and everything ready to fertilize our grass.

Some weeds seem to just appear out of no where. I don't plant them or nurture them but they continue to advance. Other weeds are good plants just wrongly allocated -- like the pansy in the middle of the yard that got moved back to the garden with it's brothers and sisters. If I don't vigilantly get rid of both kinds of weeds, my lawn will become a jumbled mess. Fertilizer alone won't save it --

Now this sounds like life. Exposure to the world drops weed seeds in my soul. Words, attitudes, and actions pop-up. If I don't identify them as trouble and pull them, those weeds can take over. The root system of that nasty ground cover was much deeper and stronger than I anticipated when I first started pulling -- some of these spiritual weeds have the same grip.

I wonder if God intended this to be the message for making weeds-in-his-garden Adam's curse. A constant object lesson for the struggle with sin.

Some of my garden work was not about weeds. It was about misallocation of resources. Like my pansy in the yard and sidewalk cracks filled with blue columbine, sometimes my efforts are not useful because I focus them in the wrong direction. Even beautiful flowers can look like a bunch of weeds when they are out-of-place. My calendar is a mess -- a little of this and little of that and a lot of running late from one good deed to another. I am trying to reorganize to make sure each event I plant purposefully.

Getting to YES! in a "Just say NO" world.

I've been noticing a life pattern lately. It is a trap and most of the world is with me (especially since it is Lent -- a season of the Christian year devoted to self-denial.) Just say 'no' to desserts, just say 'no' to credit cards, just say 'no' to drugs, just say 'no' to more taxes, just say 'no' to big government, just say 'no' everything -- and all over the world we are having protests and rallies and tea parties and legislative walkouts and football team lock-outs.

It is much easier to get people to rally around what is wrong with our world than to get them to agree on a solution to the problem. Partly because we don't have a common frame of reference anymore, but I think partly because we fear making choices to move forward.

When I say 'no' this week, it will be because the 'yes' is more important. No to dessert because I am saying yes to better health. No to TV means 'yes' to more time relating to real people. I hope others will join me as I move forward!