Weeds

I used to love to work in the garden cleaning around colorful wildflowers and making the hostas look lovely in all their green decadence.  These days gardening is no longer one of my favorite past-times.  Arthritis in both knees means I might get down on the ground to work the soil but whether I’d get back up or not is an entirely different thing.  And so the weeds have taken over, since getting someone else to do that kind of work seems almost impossible without coughing up a fortune I don’t have.

Weeds are often ugly things, choking the life out of flame azaleas and exotic Asian lilies.  But some are very beautiful, flowering, and insidious in their take-over.  They may look alluring but their task is the same – choking the life out of the living.  Weeds in our lives seem to serve the same basic purpose.  If you’re not careful, and you don’t prune them out, they will take over your life and crush any resemblance of living from it.

I’ve become complacent about some weeds in my life.  I suppose I think that if I ignore them long enough everyone else will too, and no one will notice that I’ve become rather “settled” in my approach to Kingdom life.  I go to church on Sunday.  Isn’t that enough?  Does God really expect me to live a sanctified life all the time and not just on Sunday?  Bible study doesn’t have to happen every day, does it?  And it’s okay to pray only when it suddenly occurs to me I need something, isn’t it?

I know that isn’t so but I often act as if it is. Now I lay me down to sleep – with nary a thought of speaking to God or reading his Word to save it in my heart.  I’ll get to that Bible study in a week or so, when I have more time and am not so tired.  I’ll go down that path God is showing me when I’m feeling braver and am not so overwhelmed with daily life routines. Uh-huh, God believes that.  NOT!

The only person fooled by my weak excuses is me.  Excuses, excuses, you hear them every day.  The world is filled with them.  Excuses are weeds choking out the opportunity to share Jesus with someone who really needs him. Excuses are stopping me from becoming all that God has planned for me.  Excuses hinder his ability to use me for his Kingdom’s purpose.  Excuses are lies I tell myself that neither I nor anyone else really believes.

I look at my church and wonder how God can use such a small gathering of folks.  We’re so small we could hold Sunday services in the back of a pickup truck.  We don’t have much funding or manpower.  All we’ve got is the belief that God can use our church to make a difference in our community.  How exactly God is going to do that I have no idea but he’s a great big God who can do anything, even with a teeny, tiny church on the edge of town. 

At times I look at myself and wonder that God could use me at all.  I mean, really, I’m pretty plain.  I’d never win a spot on America’s Got Talent, let alone America’s Next Top Model. I’m about as boring as you can get, too.  I don’t do spectacular things or attend fantastic events.  I spend my time off work quilting, crocheting, reading, and watching old movies.  Usually my only company is Hobo, my yellow tabby cat. 

I’m not real good at going to places I’ve never been and doing things I’ve never tried before.  I’m afraid I’ll get lost or fail miserably.  I’m getting better at it but I certainly would not be the first person picked for most teams.  Yet God chose me out of all others for a specific task.  I have to wonder what he’s up to.  Where is he taking me, how am I going to get there, and am I sure that’s where I want to go? 

I’m not sure where he’s taking me.  He has a path in mind I’m sure, but it seems mostly hidden to me.  How I’m going to get there is by his grace alone, of that I am very sure. Do I really what to go there? Absolutely.  I’m scared near to death but I know he would never take me anywhere that he wouldn’t make a path out for me.

Time to get out the weed-eater, weed-whacker, roto-router, or whatever it takes to obliterate the weeds eating up my life in Christ.  There’s no more time left to wait for someone else to do the weeding and no time left to ignore the inevitable.  Jesus is coming soon.  I’d better get to gettin’.