A sweet friend of mine gifted me some daylilies from her garden. The best place I could put them was in my front beds, which had not been weeded for a while, so I rose early in the morning to weed the beds before I placed the new plants.
Let me tell you. It had only been a few months since I had weeded last, and it was horrible. Shameful.
As I worked, I realized pulling weeds is an apt metaphor for our lives. We can so easily let important things slide. Do we prioritize our health, finances, and household? Do we want strong relationships with family and our brethren and, most importantly, God?
We think, “It’s okay to not meet with the saints this week. I went last week. It’s not so urgent today.” We know we need to pray more, but we don’t feel we have the time today. We put it off until tomorrow—until a more convenient time…which never seems to come.
What grows in place of the healthy habits we know we ought to be doing?
The cares of this world grow up and choke the life out of us. We become the soil of the thorny ground. The cares of the world become the main overgrowth of our gardens.
If we don’t meet with the saints, what are we doing? Do we stay home just to mess around, balance the bank book, clean the house, mow the lawn, organize the garage? Do we think, “As soon as I get those done, I can serve the Lord better; I’ll be free after this”?
In those moments, we lie to ourselves when we insist God is priority number one. Our lives expose the ugly truth that we consider these things more important than our brethren and the Lord. Right now, it’s more important to clean the house than to pray. It’s more important to make a little extra money than to visit with my brothers and sisters in Christ. The weeds have taken over.
In their proper place, these things may not be weeds. But as we prioritize them improperly, they can become weeds.
Come Sunday morning, why is the house not clean? Why are the books not balanced? Why is this work taking priority over prayer and meeting with the saints and worshiping God? What did we do all week?
Did we watch TV, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Disney+, YouTube, surf the web, favorite blogs? Did we spend time on our hobbies? Did we eat out, go on dates, have some fun? What took the place of getting these things done?
We need to weed the garden of our life. What beautiful plants need to be nurtured? Make sure other plants don’t choke them, stealing their water and nutrients.
Will it be hard? Yes. We’ll get sweaty and dirty. It’s not easy pulling things out of our lives and tossing them into the trash. Often, seemingly small things in our lives build into harmful habits. For example, I need to weed mindless Facebook scrolling out of my life.
If we fail to tend our life’s garden, it gets harder over time to clean it up, but if we continually prioritize and clean up, it’s not so hard.
When can I quit weeding? I must never quit! The cares and riches of life will always attempt to jump in the way of my priorities. We think we have pulled all the bad things out roots and all, but the world throws new harmful seeds in there when it can.
Let’s tend our gardens, get those weeds out, let the flowers flourish and the fruit burst forth! May God be praised through our priorities.