Tip of My Iceberg

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a gardener. Working in the yard is one of those necessary activities that keeps the local HOA off our backs.

We give them so many more things to grumble about as it is.

We’ve been dealing with this patch of weeds/crabgrass/unwanted stuff in our back yard for longer than I want to admit. It’s insidious stuff–from a distance it looks green and good. When you get up close, you realize it’s not what it appears.

My neighbor, Ed, told me that baking soda kills such weeds without killing the real grass.

Frankly, all I wanted to do was obliterate this stuff with the nastiness of Roundup, the ruthless herbicide killer of all things green. It’s not all that great for people, but it does do a dastardly number on growing things.

I’ve periodically spread pounds of baking soda on my lawn. It looks like it’s been sprinkled with fairy dust, all white and powdery. Soon, it starts doing the deed on the weeds, and within days, what was once green and growing is now brown and mostly dead.

Herein lies the rub. Much like Miracle Max in The Princess Bride when he pronounces Wesley is only mostly dead. Like my weeds. Max is able to revive him with a potion dipped in chocolate, and eventually all things end happily ever after.

My weeds were made of sterner stuff, like Wesley, and thinking they’d just go away because I dusted them with my baking soda potion was not great planning on my part.

If I leave these little buggers in the ground, something not so magical happens, and they begin to revive. I’ve got to pull out the mostly dead things so they can be completely dead and no longer a nuisance to my yard.

Extra work I hadn’t counted on. Gardening, as I said, is not my cup of tea.

I anticipate the death of these weeds. If I do the work, I can get them all out and they won’t keep spreading like a contagion all over my yard. I have neighbors whose lawns are beautiful–it takes time to  keep them that way.

I’d love my life to be a lush lawn. None of the uglies of my own weedy wrongdoings. My critical spirit. My judgmental attitude toward others. These and others are the weeds that occupy my life. The Bible calls them sin–those things that miss the mark of perfection, which is the standard we have to keep up if we’re to be fit for heaven.

Problem is, no one can do that. We all suck as gardeners in that respect. We can identify a few weeds here and there and make an attempt to pull them out. To be diligent and deal with every one of those pesky wrongdoings won’t work.

We’re not that good.

Jesus is the ultimate Gardener. He doesn’t destroy us with Roundup or smack us down with cosmic consequences. He forgives with grace and mercy.

I’m going to keep dealing with my messy lawn–at my house and in my heart. Jesus is weed-whacking the mess in my heart, with love and diligence.

Now if He’d only deal with my back yard.