Weeds

My wife starting gardening as a hobby a few years ago and so I also acquired a hobby - weeding. Weeding is one of those activities where it takes just enough of your brain that you can't completely zone out, but it doesn't take all of your brain, so you can spend a lot of time thinking about things. The weeds have taught me a lot over the course of time. Here's what I learned today.

We spend a lot of time in the church trying to figure out what sin looks like. What it is that we're supposed to stay away from. The things that we should expend energy resisting. As a christian, I have a long list of things that I do that cause me shame and guilt. I try hard to identify and avoid those things.

But here's what I learned from the weeds: you don't have to know much about weeds in order to weed effectively. You don't have to know their scientific names, or which weeds grow well in which soil. You don't have to be able to tell the difference between broad leaf weeds and rhizomes. As a matter of fact, you don't even have to be good at being able to recognize weeds at all.

All you need to know in order to be a good at weeding is what plants you want to keep. You decide which plants are the good plants, the ones that will produce fruit or beautiful flowers and then you get rid of everything else.

So, in your life you can do the same thing. Decide what's worth keeping; what will produce fruit and beauty. Everything else is just weeds.

Frantic

  My two year old son was lost recently. We were at an outdoor festival and my wife thought I had him and I thought she had him. When she came to me and asked me where he was, I was frantic. I began to think of all the things that could possibly happen to him: he could wander out into the busy street, he could get trampled by the wagon-ride horses, someone could grab him and take off.

  I made a beeline for the stage. I made the band stop playing and the singer stop singing and announce that my son was missing, because if my son is lost then EVERYTHING ELSE MUST STOP UNTIL HE IS FOUND!

  Is this the way God feels about his children? When we are lost, is he frantic? Does he drop everything until we are found? Is this the message of the story of the lost sheep in Luke 15?

  I have a hard time believing that God feels this way about me. I tend more towards believing that he\'s aloof, waiting for me to return to him. But since I have become a dad I've gained new insight into the feelings that God possibly has for us. And those feelings are deep and passionate. It's humbling to believe that these are the feelings that God might have for us.

  My son was found and he didn't even know he was lost (which is a discussion for another time). I look forward to many more lessons learned from him.