I spent over two hours this morning pulling weeds in the garden. I crawled on my hands and knees, plucking out foxtail, smartweed, lambs-quarters, and, yes, the ubiquitous pokeweed. (I’m still on a mission to keep every one of those pokeweed plants from producing seeds this year. It’s a battle.) While tearing out gazillions of weeds in order to make space for the food plants, I was reminded of Jesus’s teaching about seeds.
“Consider this: There was a farmer who went out to sow seeds. As he cast his seeds, some fell along the beaten path and the birds came and ate them. Others fell onto gravel that had no topsoil. They quickly shot up, but when the days grew hot, they were scorched and withered because they had insufficient roots. Others fell among the thorns, so when they sprouted, the thorns choked them. But other seeds fell on good, rich soil that kept producing a good harvest. Some yielded thirty, some sixty, and some even one hundred times as much as he planted! If you’re able to understand this, then you need to respond.”
“What was sown along the path represents the one who listens to the message of the kingdom but doesn’t understand it. The Adversary then comes and snatches away what was sown into his heart.
“The one sown on gravel represents the person who gladly hears the kingdom message, but his experience remains shallow. Shortly after he hears it, troubles and persecutions come because of the kingdom message he received. Then he quickly falls away, for the truth didn’t sink deeply into his heart.
“The one sown among thorns represents one who receives the message, but all of life’s busy distractions, his divided heart, and his ambition for wealth result in suffocating the kingdom message and it becomes fruitless.
“But what was sown on good, rich soil represents the one who hears and fully embraces the message of the kingdom. Their lives bear good fruit—some yield a harvest of thirty, sixty, even one hundred times as much as was sown.” (Matthew 13:3-9, 13-23 TPT)
If you’ve been in the church any length of time you’ve probably heard this preached or studied it in depth. But there were a couple of things in my physical work today that resonate with the spiritual work of pulling weeds.
One, this project seemed huge when I started. Overwhelming, really. The lettuces, kale, peppers, potatoes, and onions were overwhelmed by the weeds that had grown up among them so that they couldn’t get enough light or nourishment. Sometimes huge projects – whether spiritual or physical – seem overwhelming. I’ve found that if you just focus on the Next One Thing – start it, do it, then move on – soon you’ve accomplished a lot. That’s what happened in the garden today. I started with one end of one row – freeing one plant from the tyranny of its invader neighbors – and then just kept going. I have a spiritual project to work on, too, and the advice of a friend last night resonates with this. “Just ask God where to start.” Then start.
(And, no, don’t ask me yet about my garage cleaning project……)
The other thing I was thinking about was the difference in ease in plucking out the invaders. The smaller ones are easy to pluck out because their root systems are not as well developed. Larger ones can be a two handed, full-body tug, though. This is a metaphor for the “weeds” in our spiritual lives, too. When we have a sin-invader whose seeds invade our lives, the invader is much easier to eliminate when it is new and small and not strongly rooted.
Peter says it this way, “So abandon every form of evil, deceit, hypocrisy, feelings of jealousy and slander.” (1 Peter 2:1 TPT). There are plenty of other sins named in the Bible, but you can quickly see just in this small list how a small seed of evil or deceit or jealousy or…. whatever… can grow into a large, troublesome weed that “suffocates the Kingdom message.” Jesus calls us to “seek first the Kingdom” – do this above all other things – so anything that suffocates the Kingdom within us has to go.
Weeds. Parts of life. But they don’t have to stay.
God,
Thank you for the amazing ways in which you “garden” our hearts and spirits. Thank you for the gifts you give us and the seeds you plant within us. Where we have weed seeds, give us courage to let you take them out. Give us focus so we seek first your Kingdom above all else. We pray in Jesus’s name, Amen.
“So above all, constantly seek God’s kingdom and his righteousness….” (Matthew 6:33 TPT)