How Does Your Garden Grow?

Courtesy of Google Images

The Chickadees and I were out playing in the yard. Riding bikes and scooters, tossing the softball, when I heard Chickadee #2 yell, "No! Don't mess up our flowers!" I turned to find the eldest pulling weeds out of one of our flower beds. Chickadee #2 had, just the day before, presented me with a bouquet of these purple-petaled plants and now I had to break it to her that they were weeds. A nuisance that needed to be removed. We all worked together and got approximately 1/64 of our yard weeded. It's a start, I guess! 

I explained to the girls that you have to grab the weed from the root, removing the whole plant, otherwise it would grow right back. And, even though it's pretty, we have to get rid of it because it will steal the sunlight and water from the plants we're trying to grow. 

Just like my life, when I'm trying to uproot sin, it's easy to clean up the part that everyone can see while ignoring what's below the surface. The real problem that will come back quickly until the root is removed. Continuing to suck the life out of what I want to grow and to flourish.

It had rained the day before, so it was pretty easy work. The ground is so much more willing to give up the weed's root after the rain.

When the day is gray and the rain falls, rather than complain that we have to stay indoors, I thank the Lord for the quenching of the earth's thirst, for this weather is necessary for life.
For me, too, this kind of "weather" is necessary. A heavy rain, maybe even a storm, that at first seems to ruin my plans, comes and nourishes me, makes me more pliable, so that the Lord can more easily remove the weeds in my life.