One of the greatest pains in a gardener's sensibilities is weeding. Weeds are frustrating because they seem to sprout faster, grow bigger, and spread farther than most cultivated plants. And they also manage to keep growing in spite of a lack of rain.
Some people argue that weeds are contextual. A weed is “a plant that is not valued where it is growing,” (Merriam-Webster) which implies that it might have value somewhere else. And I can get behind that. That annoying clover in a strawberry patch is a desirable plant in a hay field. I love walking through a field and seeing clover blossoms bobbing in the wind. Clover and alfalfa add a lot of nutrition to a hay field and the animals that feed from it. But I pull clover out of my garden because the clover is getting in the way of my family’s nutrition. We don’t eat hay. We do eat strawberries.
Moreover, if we look at the class of plants that we call weeds, I think we will discover that they are often the plants, like thistles, that have evolved to take over everything. They reproduce inmore ways and more efficiently than the average garden plant without giving us much in return. When we lived in Oregon, I had a love-hate relationship with wild blackberries. They produce delicious fruit, but they can also take over whole plum trees in the space of a summer and grow thorns that are easily the size of my fingernail. Another in this class is morning glories, also known as bindweed, a beautiful flowering vine that will pull down absolutely anything in an effort to get to the sun. The only plant I’ve ever seen take over a wild blackberry patch is a morning glory vine (though kudzu might give it a run for its money). Lots of growth; not much in return.
Morning Glory at work.
All of these, even thistles, have their place in the natural order (or so I am told), but all of them are also dangerous to the cultivated plants in a garden. If I expect my tomatoes to produce fruit in August, I have to keep them free of morning glories in June and July. If I want plums, I have to forgo the wild blackberries. Or rather, I have to get rid of them. No weed is ever content with a tiny corner. Weeds are designed to spread, to take advantage of any open space, any drooping branch, any careless moment.
So too for our own lives. There are influences in our souls and in society that produce no godly fruit, and yet they spread like thistles or kudzu: the seed of an unchecked thought, the runner of an unforgiven sin, possibly even between generations, the rooting branch of an unholy desire. These things may be immoral; they may be demanding; or they may just be distracting. The problem is that they will spread, and they will tie up and pull down every righteous impulse to get the time and attention they need to survive and produce their own fruit. Envy, jealousy, or prejudice muscle out charity. Resentment and entitlement (which is a combination of pride and coveting) keep joy from ever really leafing or flowering. That desire for approval or fear of conflict takes over a space where courage or justice should grow. The soil is good. The sun and water are plentiful. But the garden rapidly becomes a tangled mess, and any fruit that grows to maturity is a miracle.
Weeds in our lives is an immensely personal topic, and honestly, I’m reluctant to tackle it to the depth that it should be tackled because any conversation on this topic will feel personal. The weeds that are easy to pull are not the weeds that need the attention. The dangerous weeds are the ones closest to our hearts. Jesus defines spiritual weeds as “the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things” (Mark 4:18-19). What keeps you awake worrying at night? What makes you angry with your neighbors, both near and far? What desire makes you discontent with your current situation? OR what makes you sit back with a sigh of satisfaction at the end of the day and feel that all is well? What wealth, be it physical, spiritual, or financial, are you trusting in or investing in? That might be a weed too. If it’s a weed, it needs to die. The Cross is the great garden spade, and all of our weeds will die on it eventually. If you are not willing to tack something to the Cross, it has taken over too much of your soul.
Since this is such a personal topic, let me give you a personal example. About 10 years ago, before my husband entered the ministry, we bought a house. We had been looking for over a year, and finally we found almost exactly what we were looking for (in our price range too). It was big enough for our family, it had good bones, it had gorgeous shade trees, established fruit trees and vines, and its own well in a wonderful neighborhood. It was a mess when we bought it, and we put a lot of elbow grease into it, but we turned that house into our own personal paradise. We worked hard. We learned new skills. We developed a lifestyle. It was a dream come true, and many an evening, we sat in the backyard with a glass of something cold and sighed in satisfaction, feeling that all was right in our tiny corner of the world.
Then Seth got called into the ministry, and suddenly a move for graduate school became a necessity. The thought of selling that house was hard. We honestly thought about having Seth commute from Oregon to Michigan, three months at a time, and pay rent so that we wouldn’t lose the house, the neighborhood, and the school environment that we had achieved while we had been there. It took some advice from wise friends to pry us free and get us back on the course that led us to where we are today. Selling that house was not easy, but it allowed us to live rent free in Michigan and taught us the wisdom of letting go of temporary things.
The process of weeding our lives is a complicated one. After all, at the base level, we are the dirt that the plants grow in. We don’t know at any given moment what is a weed and what is a plant that will grow good fruit. We have some help with this. Our gardening manual (the Bible) tells us explicitly to get rid of things that grow anger, malice, envy, slander, laziness, contention, and discontentment, just to name a few. Any of these fruits in your life should tell you that you need to pull some weeds. It also tells us to entrust our security and identity to God to the point where we can let go of absolutely anything else. And the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, keeping company with fellow believers, confessing to trusted friends, and daily immersion in Scripture will act like a mulch to keep the soil soft so that it’s easier to pull those weeds.
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| Thistles advancing on my compost bin. |
But ultimately what patch of earth can weed itself? That’s a rhetorical question. We don’t weed ourselves. God, as a consummate gardener, is going to pull these weeds out of our lives. We, as living soil, will have the opportunity to release them or to try to hold on. And this is a constant process. Even the tiniest sins scatter seeds in corners of our lives to sprout later. Gossip, passive aggressiveness, and looking out for number one become habits remarkably quickly. And anyone who has ever wrestled with a sin of identity like anger, alcoholism, drug addiction, sexual identity, or workaholism knows that you don’t become clean by yourself. These things have to come under the Lordship of Christ and submit to being weeded, sometimes weeded out. Spiritual mulch (as described above) helps with this, but ultimately, only God can do it.
The fact is that a large percentage of our lives is uncultivated, not ready for the word of God to be scattered in it. We are all full of weeds, cheerfully giving the soil of our heart, mind, and strength to whatever suits us personally, be it that new house, that pretty coworker, or that unsatisfied childhood longing. Think of what Jesus lists as weeds of the soul: the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and desire for other things. Is anything that fits into those categories ever satisfied? Everything in this world wants to claim as much of you as it can get. Jobs, political parties, ideologies, even commercial products like social media or tv shows want you to make them your identity, body and soul.
But you are not your own. You were bought with a price, which means that you will not be abandoned to the thistles of the soul. Join God in this great work of growing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Open your heart to the Spirit’s prompting when you hear, “It’s time to get rid of that. That right there is keeping you from being fruitful.” And take steps to let it go.
