A few summers ago, while I was
home after my freshman year of college, I spent a pretty good chunk of time
weeding. My neighbors needed work done in their flower beds, as did my
grandparents. Spending hours doing work alone gave me time to think, and I
found good application to the Christian life.
It takes effort to maintain our
relationship with God. It’s not light work to truly serve Him. Being human and
having a sin nature makes this job difficult. Just as God set Adam in the
Garden of Eden to tend it and keep it, so too must we keep and tend our lives.
Weeding a garden can be
compared to keeping our lives free of sin. First, as I mentioned, it takes a
lot of work. I left with a backache every time. Keeping sin out is a battle.
It’s a war. This war is waged in the heavens (“…we wrestle not against flesh
and blood…”), but don’t think we can just give it to God and then expect He’ll
work through us when we’re unwilling to work too. There’s a reason why we are
to take the whole armor of God. And our guard better be up. It will take a
daily effort to keep the garden clean.
While weeding, I encountered
weeds of all sorts. Sometimes they were small with shallow roots, but they were
all over. Other times, I’d find one with roots a foot or two deep in the ground.
Sin comes in all sizes in our lives. Sometimes it’s something that just takes
minor corrections. Just bend down and pull it out. But those types can be quick
to show up again if we aren’t paying attention. Others are a battle. It takes a
lot of digging, some planning, and a lot of sweat. The deep-rooted sin in our
lives isn’t just some quick job to get rid of. We will have to exert ourselves,
move some dirt, and end up tired. We may break a shovel. (I did.) We may need
to soften up the ground around it first. Often, the weed won’t come out as is.
It has to be cut down before we can go to work on the roots. But unless a
thorough job is done, it will return, and it will return bigger than before.
Weeding isn’t easy; it’s a lot of work. But it’s necessary if what is good is
to survive.
But sometimes, what might
appear good can’t survive. On more than one occasion, I found a deep-rooted
weed growing among the plant it was choking. They were so intertwined, I
couldn’t possibly get the weed out without taking the purposeful plant out as well.
There are sometimes things in our lives that aren’t themselves sinful, but they
enable other sin to be there. And the good plant and the weed are so wound
together that they both have to die to keep the garden clean.
Take a romantic relationship,
for example. There’s nothing wrong with mature people being in a relationship.
Relationships are eventually necessary if one expects to get married. But there
is ample opportunity in relationships to get into sin. Getting too intimate or
fighting so that others are pulled in can turn a relationship that would be
good into an enabler of sin. If these activities continue, the good plant, the
relationship, grows with the weed and allows that sin to continue. And in order
to pull the sin out, the relationship must go.
I’m a pretty mellow person, but
sports can get me riled up. When I was at Beach Reach, a handful of guys played
basketball during free time. I started out playing well, but then I started
making mistakes. Knowing that I needed a shower before the evening, I opted to
leave early before I started to get mad and take it out on others. There’s
nothing wrong with playing basketball, but I had to walk away before it caused
me to sin. There are many applications we can make.
Living the Christian life is
not an easy thing. It will take hard work to keep ourselves clean. God wants to
grow amazing things in our lives, but that won’t happen if we allow sin to
choke those things out. Take the time daily to weed the garden, know what needs
to be uprooted, then see the fruit that will be produced.
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