And so I guess it is not a big surprise that I continue to find our garden is full of lessons for life, and this week it taught me some more as I strolled through it.
Having SO much rain interspersed with sunny days has meant everything is growing profusely in our garden….including the weeds.
Weeds are popping up from soil we had brought in from other sources, from areas that seemed barren when we moved in but where seeds are sprouting and pushing through, and from seeds in the sludge (filled with goat and cow poo from the village 'road') that has washed in via the flooding through our front gate onto the driveway. So there has been lots of 'weedpulling' lately. We have had thorny weeds, spikey ones, sharp ones, super-spreader ones, short rooted ones, long rooted ones, short ones and some have managed to get quite tall because they were hidden behind other garden plants or were well camoflauged... (can you spot the long stemmed large 'weed' in the middle of the photo below?)
But there have been a couple of other kinds of weeds too - even more subtle but no less problematic - from which I realised important lessons can be learned.
The first is 'grass' and the second is 'flowers'!
Learning from the 'grass' weeds:
When we arrived to a plot without a stitch of visible grass, we were concerned that our cat would have no grass when she needed it. So when the first little bits of 'grass' type 'weeds' emerged we thought we would leave some of one particular type growing in one area and pull out the rest.
Well something interesting happened. Our minds had in them that 'some grass was allowed'. But after a few months and lots of rain, we realised we had lots of grass coming up everywhere and too much to pull (especially as we were both lower in normal energy in recovering from COVID). And day by day the situation was not getting better as the grass continued to grow…and started to also seed! Additionally our gardener had been on Christmas/New Year leave and then had some business to attend to which meant he was not able to come for a few weeks.
Thankfully though he came this past week and with relief, the grass overgrowth is gone (well as far as we can see at this point!)…I don't think it will be long and some more will appear so our cat won't be forever without grass (and there is probably already some hiding in the plants that she will find)…but we are going to have to make sure to stay more vigilant with our grass-pulling and less tolerant of 'just leaving a bit here and there'.
This reminds me of those more subtle forms of sin. The grass was not thorny or spikey nor did it first appear super-spreader. It didn't feel dangerous or risky to have some. We left only one type so it was easy to spot and it was the one that was easy to pull out and seemed to be the cat's favourite.
But in thinking the sin and weeds analogy though further...
what are weeds really?
….as they are not necessarily inherently 'bad' plants.
Some of our weeds were tiny thorn trees growing from a seed that maybe a bird dropped. Some were grasses that in another location in the village would provide a good ground cover. From our years living right in the bush I realised that what I might have once termed weeds in my garden are actually wild-flowers or other native plants with many useful qualities.
So I had to ask myself what really makes a plant a weed?…
Really its because it is growing somewhere that the garden owner and designer does not want. The place it is growing it is not appropriate or desired. It's presence and/or activity does not please the gardener.
This is so much like sin…sin—ie falling short of God's standard of living. Because when we sin, fundamentally we are doing things with life that were never meant to be done in the way that the designer and creator of life and thus the owner of life purposed for them to be done.
Weeds are plants that are not serving the purpose of the garden (life) designed and desired by the gardener. I remember spending hours and hours as a kid helping my parents dig out dandelion plants from their front lawn because they were 'weeds'….but dandelions are actually good plants. Yet in the middle of my parent's lawn they were mis-placed and thus unacceptable.
That's like our sin. Every type of sin is a mis-placing of something - not accidentally losing it, but a 'mis-placing' in the sense of wrongly placing it.
- Worship is not wrong but when it is mis-placed and not according to God's standard and toward him, it is wrong and needs to be 'pulled out of our lives'. So worship of another 'god' instead of the one true God is mis-placed worship.
- Sex is not wrong, but mis-placed sex so that it becomes adultery or any other form of 'illicit' sex makes such sexual sins 'bad'.
- Seeing the gifts or blessings God gives to others and rejoicing with them or seeing their lives as an example and longing for God's good purposes to be experienced in our lives is good, but seeing the blessings of others and coveting them for our own greedy self-seeking and self-honour desires is bad.
- Bearing witness that defends our neighbours and endorses the truth is a good thing, but bearing witness that is false and favours evil is no longer a right kind of witness.
- Even speaking truth can be 'bad' or 'mis-placed' when it is not said with love, and in love, or if it is said in a time or way that serves only self-promoting purposes.
My 'grass' weeds, have also reminded me that 'leaving a little bit of something' in my life that isn't a good thing—in the hope that I will be able to control it—is risky and dangerous. And from this came three lessons for me:
1. attitudes and actions that should be got rid of all together cannot still 'have a little bit on the side' with the hope I will just keep it in control.2. If it is something that God doesn't want in my life it is better that it goes completely. …and if help from others is needed to keep accountability or assistance to enable and support such decisions it is worth getting it.3.If there is something that is in my life that is not sin in itself but I don't want it to dominate, I will have to put extra measures in place to keep it in control. Some good things can become bad things when they become dominating things. Any good gift of God can become an idol if we don't keep it in its proper place.
And that leads me to the 'flower' lesson.
Learning from the 'flower' weeds:
The second issue of flowers is even more subtle than the grass. Flowers are beautiful and they provide food for bees and butterflies. In our yard that started so 'barren' to have the colour of many flowers around fills the heart with joy, improves the mood and benefits God's little flying critters. And our Madagascar Periwinkles fulfill all these criteria. Additionally they don't take any maintenance to produce an almost continual show of colour. Yes we know they can multiply and shoot their seeds all over, but they don't reproduce as fast as grass, and they are more beautiful than plain grass. They are kind of part of the plan/design of our garden. We actually want them in the garden as part of the 'good' garden.
However, they are prone to go beyond where we want them.
They can also easily 'fly under the radar' when they are small and so we don't realise how prolific they have become until they are more well established. Though their flowers stand out clearly, as small green plants they blend in easily and are not always so easily spotted, especially when its green leaves are against a backdrop of other green plants.
Not only that but our garden helper has no idea (at this stage) that we don't want them so he doesn't point them out or pull them out.
Again this has so much to teach me….Even the most beautiful and wholesome things cannot just be left unchecked and unmonitored.
We can't think that its only the 'bad' things or the 'risky' things or the things that we know we need to monitor (like the grass) that needs our attention in regard to holiness in our life. We need to also be watchful on the 'good' things to make sure they are rightly placed in our lives. Good things can become bad things when they are out of sync with holy priorities, or begin to dominate areas of our lives that should be stewarded differently.
These are really subtle areas which are much harder to discern….like helping others is a good thing, but if that starts to dominate my life so that my kids or husband don't get the time God wants me to share with them and have good communication with them, then helping others in the way I am doing it has become 'sin'. I am falling short of God's full and ultimate design and that 'helping' no longer pleases him. These are areas which others are less likely to point out to us as sin, or are less likely to be mentioned as an example of sin in a Sunday sermon, so are even more 'subtle' in their ability to overgrow our lives and smother out our Creator and Redeemer's design and purpose for us, without us realising.
Even more subtle is that these flowers are the only flowers in some local yards, so for our gardener such flowers are not only 'allowed' but they are desired and in his home garden such flowers may fulfil his garden design. In our lives, we have to remember that the priorities in some areas of our lives which may be fine for one person, may not be God's plan for the next person. So these issues are subtle.
What about you?….what are the weeds in your life?….but also what are the grasses and flowers in your life that need closer watching if you are to truly be and become all that God desires for you?
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