Thoughts from the Garden – Weeds Part 2

 

I don’t know much about weeds, that is I don’t know what they’re called, I don’t know their names. But I do know what a strawberry plant looks like and this morning as I was weeding that was what was important. After all my goal was to remove the weeds for the benefit of the strawberries, therefore I needed to keep my eye on the strawberries, I needed to identify them and work around them and preserve them.

There are folks who define themselves by weeds, by what they are against rather than defining themselves in terms of what they’re for. Political parties can be like that, factions in political parties can especially be like that. The folks against President Obama’s health care program make it clear they are against it, what they don’t make clear is what they are for – unless I’m to draw the conclusion that they are for sick people being without health care.

There are religious folk who are a’gin just about everything that would bring pleasure to a miserable pilgrim in this life; no danc’in or alcohol or cigars, or even smil’in. I think I used to be pretty much like that, I knew the doctrines I was against better than I knew the doctrines I was for; I knew the weeds and not the strawberries.

There are preachers who will preach against 100 sins and contrary doctrines before they’ll preach for anything – including the Biblical Jesus. There are ministries who spend 24/7 identifying and exposing false doctrine, it’s their bread and butter, it’s their identity, and their followers feed off of it like sharks feeding off castaways in the ocean. Now I’m not saying that we ought not to know what poison ivy looks like, but not all weeds are poison ivy and my mission is to know what strawberries look like. And even if all weeds were like poison ivy, my focus would still need to be the strawberries.

I don’t think I harmed a single strawberry as I was weeding. That was good for the strawberries and it was good for me, Vickie doesn’t like it when I mangle her garden. But seriously, when we focus on Jesus Christ then the weeds are usually pretty apparent; when we focus on who He is in us and who we are in Him we can usually tell when a foreign element is present and is seeking to damage our garden of relationship in Christ and with others. It’s as we see Jesus that we are changed into His image, not as we obsess about weeds.