By the Roots
This past Saturday I was conscripted to work in the flower beds. They had been utterly neglected since last fall, and it were starting to become overrun by errant leaves, bits of trash and of course, weeds. My wife and I are pretty good with children and pets, but we have the hardest time keeping plants alive.
We managed to kill a cactus. Yes. A cactus.
But weeds seem to be able to grow anywhere. Give them the tiniest crack in the sidewalk or an ill-kept flower bed and they will take over. And now, I’m a bouncer and my flower beds are the hottest club in town. It’s up to me to enforce who gets in and who doesn’t. The perennials get to stay. Weeds, there’s the door.
But there’s something about gardening that brings us closer to the Kingdom. When we put our hands into the earth, we are reconnected to that first garden and our first task as a people – to tend the earth and fill it. Pulling weeds is an obvious metaphor for confessing and forsaking the sin that can so easily tangle us up. And when we’re finished with our flower beds and our hearts, the gardens of our lives will become beautiful and vibrant.
Image courtesy of countrykitty. Sourced via Flickr Creative Commons
No Comment