With Joe down for a few more
weeks, I decided I would help with the lawn work. Now, I love to mow. I mean, driving fast in circles on the lawn mower let’s me get my inner Indy 500 dreams out. And I also don’t mind trimming the bushes..and we have a lot of bushes. A lot. But trimming bushes allows me to get creative and stylish, almost like hair styling. There is another chore, though, weedeating. I didn’t know if I liked it or not but to me the lawn is not finished until you weedeat the edges and walls and fence line. So I decided I would get after it.
A bunch of sweat and leg wounds later (I know I should wear pants but it was too hot for jeans and that was all I had) I finished the front yard. The next day I tackled the backyard.
I now know how to untangle line, reload the line and get between rocks and other right places. I have blisters, I am grass stained and bruised. I have blood dripping from wounds on my legs and I may have cracked a bone in my foot when I tossed a fence pole (like a beast) and it bounced back to land on my foot.
Later, as I study, I think of the parable Jesus tells in Matthew 13 about weeds. In the parable, the good sower plants perfect crops but the enemy comes and sneaks weeds within them in the middle of the night. His workers offered to pull them up (they didn’t have weed eaters in the 1st century) but he said, “no.” He was concerned the good plants would be messed with. He said, though, when the crops had matured he would then pull them up and bind them up and burn them.
I had to move stuff, heavy rocks, boards Joe is saving for a project, a dog swimming pool and huge rocks and concrete. Sometimes I had to actually pull the weeds because I couldn’t get to them with the weed eater. When I was finished I had to put everything back, neat and orderly.
In the end, I was hot and exhausted but I felt a huge sense of satisfaction. It looked nice. But I also knew it was done well, all the weeds were eaten...for now. The chaos of the overgrown weeds, and haphazard pile of wood was taken care of...for the time being. I know they will be back. Who created weeds, anyway???
I ponder the weeds and wonder about my weeds down within my good stuff God has cultivated within me. How often should I “weedeat” that garden? I would say as often, if not more than my lawn. I wonder what those wounds would be like as I knock weeds out through my rock hard stubbornness? How many obstacles will I have to move around to get those weeds hidden behind them. Do I have all the tools I need and do I know how to use them? Most importantly, do I want the weeds gone badly enough to put in the back breaking work? Jesus cultivated all the right things in my new life. But the evil one will slip in some bad, stubborn weeds now again. I guess I better get busy. I have work to do.
Today:
🌱 Take up weedeating
🌱 Allow Jesus to cultivate the good stuff.
🌱 Remember, it’s not about the work...it’s the purpose (a quote from my smart friend Melissa.)
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