Deep Thoughts from the Flower bed

Didn't there used to be a part of Saturday Night Live called "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy?" I remember doing a spoof on that in high school for a journalism class.

Anyway, that has absolutely nothing to do with anything. About 5 weeks ago my Dad spent an entire day pulling weeds from the flower bed in front of my house. He's just that kind of guy. The sad part is, about two weeks later when we returned home from vacation the flower bed had once again been taken over by weeds. My yard looks pretty nice so you definitely notice the crazy flower bed. I have been avoiding it because I kind of hate to pull weeds, and I guess I was just hoping they would go away on their own! :)

So, today I settled down next to the flower bed with some sort of gardening tool and began digging out the weeds. I seriously spent about an hour and a half on it and got about 3 square feet done. I could be at it for days! While I was sitting there though I was reminded of a book I've been reading. It's called, The Shack. The story is about a guy who goes through an unspeakable tragedy and returns to the scene a couple years later to literally spend the weekend with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. It's really kind of crazy, but interesting. Well, at one point Jesus takes the guy out back to show him the garden. The guy is amazed at how beautiful it is but notices one part that is well, like my flower bed. It's overrun with weeds and just looks bad. As they are talking Jesus is working hard to dig up that part of the garden and then reveals that the garden is actually his heart.

I began to think some more on that and realized that my heart probably looks a lot like my flower bed too. There's good stuff in there, but you almost can't see it because of all the weeds. The weeds being all the junk - fears, insecurities, unbelief, selfishness, pride, and on and on and on - that consume my thoughts. In some parts of the flower bed I even noticed that the weeds had literally choked the life out of the good plants. When I related that to my life, I realized that even this week, some of my weeds have started to take some of the life out of my good things.

I know that taking care of a flower bed requires constant attention, when a weed pops up, you've got to pull it and all the way down to the root or else it will just come right back. I also know that taking care of my heart also requires constant attention. When I start to sense one of my "weeds" creeping up on me I've got to ask God to pull it right away. Because if I don't, it could be a really long, painful process to get all those weeds pulled once I finally let God have it. And, if I've learned anything in life, I've learned that it's kind of nice to avoid the long, painful processes when you can!