In the South, and I can only speak to the South because I'm a Southerner, there are so many things we love to have in our yards, but at the top of the list:
Hydrangeas
Azaleas
Jasmine
Gardenias
Magnolia trees
Cherry blossoms...
There are loads more, but these are what I'm thinking about today.
So, there is a little patch beside our back patio, which is made of 100 year old bricks from one of our chimneys (that sounded so fancy!) that Don designed and its gorgeous. Anyway, in this patch are gardenia bushes. Two varieties. They're beauties.
But I've let the weeds grow up and of course, this is the time to weed, so I shocked Don and told him I wanted to do it today. I got my little garden gloves he bought for me and went out there and started pulling.
And pulling.
And pulling.
These weeds-- you know these weeds-- are kind of sticky and incredibly stringy. They're weak as anything, but they get crazy long.
And I realized today that they're killing these bushes.
These regal, gorgeous bushes. Strong branches, survived several winters, are never hardly fertilized, and these puny little ugly weeds have been choking them to death.
As I started pulling, I realized that they were wrapping around the bases of the bushes and those lower branches were looking poor.
No one planted these weeds. They blew in, opportunists, looking for any place they could settle in and leach nutrients and shade from something stronger. They'll never produce any fruit that is beneficial and they'll continue to grow until they've completely taken the life from the gardenias.
Unless they're stopped
Jesus, talking about the Pharisees, said, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots...." (Matt 15)
Something Don and I have been praying for the last couple of years is that every thing that has not been planted by the Lord would be uprooted.
Back to the weeds-- it's not going to be enough, my way of pulling these weeds up. I'm not digging deep enough. There are root systems under the dirt that have been established bc of my neglect. For now, I have given the branches freedom to soak up nourishment and sunlight, but the work in that area must go deeper.
I wonder.
I don't want to waste this season. There is nothing, not one thing, that God cannot redeem and pull around to see victory. Not death, not loss, nothing.
I know what I speak of.
So, pray with me that this will be a season of uprooting the weeds that have taken root in the church. The vines of error and carnality that have begun to grow up with the gardenias and choke the life out of them.
