Weeds

Look towards God old man. Look towards God woman. Look towards God young man. Look towards God young woman.

In God you will find the tools needed to do right, to build peace; to build joy; to build love.

These are tools of the mind, body and soul. They are free for the asking, free for the taking.

You would hope that once started on building goodness and light; mercy and truth, that all around you others would join in and your solo would become a heavenly choir. Many hands make light work. As a result there would be fruit enough to share in abundance.

However, into this delicious music comes static, a chorus of naysaying. Jesus described it as deliberately planted weeds in your garden. He recommended allowing them to grow until the harvest and then sorting them out to be burned.

The labor of producing something of spiritual value brings happiness initially. Unlike joy, which is eternal, happiness is fleeting.

Happiness comes when we take a moment to focus on the growth our labors have facilitated.

Growth is all around us. As beings created in the image of God, we can choose to make a garden and choose to help certain growth and restrain other, unwanted growth. It means we must labor for the good and labor to destroy the unwanted. It means laboring with a purpose towards a goal. It means being dedicated to the tasks at hand rain or shine, in sickness or health.

As I said, happiness springs from our hearts when we take a moment to focus on the difference we have made in the world. We like this feeling. It motivates us to do more.

It is sometimes rough having to beat back the unwanted. Why do dumb ol' weeds need to exist? Normally we would not even care. Weeds only become a negative when they impact our vision of something special.

As tough as it is to deal with this reality, imagine that an enemy deliberately plants weeds in your garden. Oh the static this causes one's brain! When you invest your time and efforts into creating a vision, you are investing yourself. Anything deliberately killing the vision is an enemy. Killing the enemy is rarely an option. Even when it is, it would bring negative consequences.

Why is there always an enemy to your labors?

It makes you want to give up.

But, we are never to give up. The Bible says, "be not weary in well doing".

We can go on, producing spiritual work, regardless of our feelings.

It would be wonderful if life was naught but happy moments. It would be wonderful if there was never any warfare. We wish for life to be different than reality. We sometime allow these thoughts to think external weeds are our only problem.

Actually, the external weeds are not our problem at all! They really do exist, but we are not responsible for their existence. What the purpose of those nasty weeds might be is not our issue either.

That the battlefield lies within ourselves...

is what we need to acknowledge and accept.

Fight the good fight...

of faith.

Humbly, bless God, and your fellow man, remembering who we truly are and what we are made of and why we needed Christ to die for us. He did not come to save and redeem us because we were such pristine, pretty little perfect, weed free gardens, did He?

We are without excuse and therefore should be without complaint.

Being without complaint could be a great definition for JOY.

I must surrender my imaginary control over all gardens external to my own being. Where I may, perchance, have some limited authority, such authority is totally granted by God through grace. Such authority is more to be translated in the current mind as responsibility. I am granted the power to love, not to abuse, anything and anyone I have authority over.

Meanwhile, I ever and always have my internal garden to tend, amen.


Love someone well today!

Bobby