pulling the weeds

The Abbey has a side garden that drives me crazy.  It runs the length of the house, and has some good sections where some hardy gladiolas, daylilies, and irises have been planted and tended by good gardeners (ie., not me).  This represents about a third of the garden.  

The other two-thirds is a jumble of weeds, into which I have laid down a considerable amount of periwinkle, a ground cover that I hoped would crowd out the weeds.  The little plantings have done relatively well, but the weeds persist, and persist.  It's been five years now and, like Jesus' parable of the weeds, they keep reappearing (Matthew 13:24ff).  Like the story's servants, I'm tempted to rip into that garden to get those invaders out, once and for all.  At one point, I almost committed genocide as I took a brush cutter to the whole thing, but managed not only to spare the low-lying periwinkle, but only managed to give a second chance to the weeds next season.  

Like the wise gardener said in Jesus' tale, I am advised to wait until a part of next year's growing season when the plants fully identify themselves, so that I can do weeding that will be selective,and effective.  In this way, eventually, over additional years of patient weeding, there will be a richly harvested crop of green groundcover on the side of The Abbey.

And so is the same for me and my ministry with The Abbey and yours with whomever God has assigned you.  We get frustrated with the persistent "weediness" in the souls of others and, sometimes, our own souls.  We're tempted to do some haphazard internal surgery on ourselves, in which some of the good work of The Holy Spirit can get jettisoned.  We also want to weed out of our lives those who are slow to grow in Christ, preferring to work with the "Wheaties" brand of believers, leaving the weedy ones to fend for themselves.  Cut off from The Body of Christ, in which we are told to encourage one another, none of us will grow a good crop, and the weeds will thrive.

So let's adopt the patient and wise counsel of the Master Gardener when it comes to our growth in Him and that of others.  Let's ask Him to weed us and others so that, together, we may become a beautiful planting for His Glory.