A Marvelous Prospect

As I was doing my daily studies this morning, an old thought with a new object lesson popped into my head.

You’ve heard it said, and I’ve said it myself, “Life is like a garden…” or “Our minds are like a garden, you have to keep the weeds out.” How’s that?

Think about a garden. What’s there? Either the benefits of beautiful flowers or wonderful fruit (and vegetables, or course – the tomatoes are starting to come in seriously out back – Woohoo!).

One of Shirey’s laws of gardening is that it’s best to weed a little bit every day, that way it doesn’t become a burden that destroys your love for gardening – like devoting most of steamy hot Saturday to it will most assuredly do. But what of the weeds? Why weed at all? Because weeds are undesirable plants that compete with the flowers and the veggies. Leave grass alone and it will create a thatch that chokes everything else out. Skip a few days with some of our tormentors, and the whole garden seems to be nothing but this one species!

And Mark Sanford? OK, so in our garden-lives, the good plants are our good, purposeful thoughts and actions. They produce beauty and fruit. The weeds are sin – thoughts and actions. Dealing with sins as they pop us as thoughts (all action is preceded by thought) is work, but not that difficult as an exercised discipline. But let the weeds/thoughts go, and you have trouble in abundance. They take over. And the worst is that when the weeds growing right next to the good plants get big, you can’t get them out without disturbing or destroying the roots of the good plant.

Well, isn’t that exactly what’s happened in Mark Sanford’s life? The weeds of lust and adultery were allowed to grow, and now, trying to pull them out is going to destroy his wife and children’s lives and probably (hopefully) end his political career.

Weeding – how do we do that? Two disciplines:

Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.(the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome 12:2 – The Message)

Finally, brothers and sisters, keep your thoughts on whatever is right or deserves praise: things that are true, honorable, fair, pure, acceptable, or commendable.(Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi 4:8 – God’s Word)

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Postscript – Mark Sanford – who’s he? Just in case you should read this blog post after Mr. Sanford is long-forgotten, today he’s the embattled governor of South Carolina. A couple of weeks ago, while ostensibly on a solo hike along the Appalachian Trail, he was actually in Argentina un-solo. It’s proving to be his undoing (see, for example, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/06/gop-censures-gov-sanford-absence-affair/)

1. Carol McCoy says:

   July 10, 2009 at 10:44 AM

   Hey John,

   I also have a garden this year and know exactly what you are talking about with the weeds. I cared for it daily and then I had to go away for a week and when I got home, the deer had eaten everything! I was very upset and even cried over my loss. God and I had been using that garden as a wonderful meeting place. We would talk and share as I worked and it made gardening all the better. I began to complain a little about it (okay, a lot), feeling like how could God let this happen when it was so important to me – to us. That is when he reminded me of a garden long ago. He use to walk in this garden too and talk with its keepers and then one day, just like that, that place of communion with him was destroyed. How? Sin. Sin entered into the Garden of Eden through Adam and Eve through one decision.

   Now I know deer are not sinful, but they sure can be used by God to make a point about sin and the dangers we face in the “gardens of our lives.”

   Bless you this weekend. I pray everything goes better than you could have imagined and that there would even be a couple of wonderful surprises for you as God unfolds what he is doing in your life through this discipline (Centurions) you have untaken.

   Carol