Weekly Words

In The Weeds

Whether you know it or not, all of us have experienced the feeling of being “in the weeds.” On yesterday, I was literally in the weeds as I was attending to a small flower bed that our church has planted where we worship. A month ago we planted a tree, several shrubs, Azalea’s, ornamental grass and several flowers. In order to properly care for the plants, we added our own soil and soil conditioner to feed and nurture the roots for all the new vegetation we planted. Interestingly enough, I soon found out the soil not only fostered the growth of what we wanted to grow, but it also fueled things we did not want to grow. A month later weeds had grown faster and taller than the flowers we originally planted. I wish I could tell you that those weeds came out of nowhere and all of a sudden I was shocked that they had taken over the flower bed. However, the truth is I noticed when they first sprouted and did nothing. Oh, I noted to myself that they would be a problem, but I put off handling it for another day. Well, a day went to days, days turned to weeks, and before I knew it I had a flower bed full of the greenest, healthiest, most vibrant … WEEDS.

As I was on my knees pulling weed after weed hoping that the roots of the weeds had not connected to the roots of the flowers, I began to reflect on the life lesson that I was learning. On one hand we had provided the flowers and ornamental grass everything they needed to bloom and blossom into a beautifully landscaped presentation. On the other hand the same fertilizer, soil, and conditioner that helped the things we wanted to prosper also aided things we did not want to prosper. In fact it assisted the very thing that could have suffocated our original design. The same context and conditions that produced flowers also provided weeds. I wish life and landscaping made it easy for the things that we want to bloom to grow without the things that we don’t want. However just like that flower bed, when great things bloom and blossom in our lives they are almost always accompanied by weeds. Success is accompanied by stress, jealousy, and haters. Money is accompanied by greed, meaningless, and artificial friendships. Churches are accompanied by holy hypocrites, cliques, and power struggles. Even our country exemplifies how great ideas like democracy, entrepreneurism, and freedom can be accompanied by imperialism, genocide, slavery, sexism, and homophobia.

Nevertheless, those weeds did not have to overtake our flowers, and our weeds don’t have to consume and conquer our lives. I had the opportunity to pick, pull or chop those weeds out as soon as I saw them, but the beauty of the flowers distracted me from the urgency of the weeds. We allow this to happen all the time in our relationships, our society, our careers, and our personal lives. We look at what is good, and though we see some budding problems and predicaments, we put off addressing the weeds in our lives in order to continue smelling the flowers in our lives. This procrastination soon finds us covered and even conquered by weeds and before we know it life’s demands become too much for our supply and we suffocate. So make up your mind today that no matter how beautiful the flowers are in your life, you will also pay attention to the weeds.

Humbly in Christ’s Love,
Pastor B.A. Jackson