Life Through the Lens: Weeds and us

This post is the author’s personal opinion.

How easily we can be misled.

Some years ago, when visiting a friend in England, she took us to see her friend’s wonderful garden.

Proudly she showed off her African daisies in full bloom.

We didn’t have the heart to inform her that in our area, they are a declared plant and treated as a wildly spreading noxious weed, even though many people still grow them in their gardens.

So what starts as a pretty and desirable flower can be something causing harm: a weed.

I wonder how many of us, if we honestly wandered around the gardens of our lives, would recognize the “weeds” impacting our lives?

The smart or clever comments that we might think bring a fresh scent of excitement may hurt and cause a friendship or even a long-standing relationship to wither and die.

A life supposedly blooming with busyness, but too busy to recognize a call for help, can easily become wilted and dried up.

I believe we all have “weeds” in our lives.

Some weeds we might recognise but decide, “oh, they only pop up now and again; they’re not worth worrying about”, only to find, some time later, that they have grown, become a permanent part of our life-gardens, and are choking out some of our lives’ real flowering and sweet-smelling aspects.

It can be hard to weed our lives.

Some of those weeds have taken root and have such a strong hold on our lives.

Fortunately, a loving God recognises that the “weed” can often be more robust than we are, and does something about it.

His words in the Bible say this: “By grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

What he is saying is, “Trust that I love you so much that my son Jesus is happy to help you get rid of the ‘weeds’ that are messing up and may even have taken over your life.”

“Just ask for my help.

“My son and I are great life-gardeners.

“We can get rid of weeds and help the good plants of your life grow and flower and produce more love fruits for you to share.”

Happy gardening.

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