Tending Your Garden - Pull That!

So like I mentioned last week, I’ve spent some time in my garden lately. My very quiet, lonely garden. Hubby and the kids leave me alone out there our of fear I’ll ask them to join me in all my weed-pulling fun. God, on the other hand, loves to talk while I’ve got my hands in the dirt. You know, He’s so creative. Everything around us points back to Him if we only look. And He kept pointing things out to me as I pulled, and pulled, and pulled…

And then didn’t pull.

See, in the process of working on my front flower bed I ran across this plant about to flower. Oh yes! Another flower I hadn’t killed—yeah me! I couldn’t wait to see what color it would be. I pulled all the weeds around it and continued to the next section where I found another one of these plants. I didn’t remember planting them, but they’d grown so full they were way too big to be weeds. Besides, they didn’t look like your normal weed.

It wasn’t until I was on my third section when I saw several smaller versions of the same ‘plant’ that I recognized it for the weed it was. Mom had pointed them out to me in their small form, and I’d pull them as they came in. In that moment I remembered seeing those small weeds in the late fall but had told myself I’d get them come spring. Problem was, with the warm spring we’re having, they’d grown to a state I no longer recognized by the time I began my weeding.

I should have pulled them when I first saw them.

Sin is so like that. Too often we have a seedling of sin enter our lives, and the Holy Spirit points it out. But we don’t want to yank it right then. Either we’re enjoying it too much or we believe we can handle it—no way it will grow any bigger because we wouldn’t let it. Sin, however, can grow quickly in a season we weren’t prepared for and before we know it, we don’t even see it as sin anymore.

Don’t play around with sin. Don’t let it begin to root, grow, and change in your life. The second you see it, yank it out before it becomes something you don’t recognize any more. Because sin, when it flowers, isn’t all that pretty.

“Above all else, guard your hearts for everything you do flows from it.” Proverbs 4:23