Leave The Weed

Right… at first glance you may quickly think I am going to try convincing you how wrong it is to smoke marijuana… or to do drugs of any kind. No… this is not that kind of ‘weed removal’ encouragement… although… wait…

OK… I’ll refrain!

Rather, this is an admonition to be careful about being SO quick and sometimes rather ruthless with tearing out the ‘weeds’ of your life… the ugly and unwelcome growth that seems to almost be taking over your ‘garden’ of hope… cluttering the persona you are hoping to present. I mean… the Bible does encourage us to sanctify ourselves… to depart from evil… to purify our hearts and minds… and ‘be holy’.

"Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the LORD your God". Leviticus 20:7

One of the tendencies for sanctifying yourself, or becoming holier… even working to purify your life is to remove the ugliness from your life… the unwanted growth… the things that are distracting you and others from the ‘garden’ of your life… from the ‘orchard’ of your life… from the very beauty that is beginning to grow in you.

Leave it!

Jesus himself told us a story about NOT tearing out the weeds in a field for fear of disrupting/destroying new and tender roots of the good crops all around it. Sure, this parable was mainly intended as a ‘world view’ concept (don’t get too carried away with purifying society), but it can directly apply to our spiritual lives, too. See… it is important to fertilize, not weed-kill! Matthew 13:24-30

That entire passage is much too large to include here (please click-n-read it), but the last two verses make the point;

"But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn." Matthew 13:29-30

Don’t be so quick to remove unwanted or unwelcome growth in your life. As that passage reads, these ‘weeds’ are not necessarily your fault… they have been planted there by your enemy! Their main intent is to discourage you… to distract you… even to cause you to ‘weed the garden’, as it were!

Jesus is encouraging us to be careful of cleansing our own lives of these weeds… these unsightly growths in the garden of our lives. Rather… continue to water your entire garden… continue to fertilize… continue to nurture and care for it. Remember, the bible does tell us that it rains and shines on the just and the unjust and the sun rises and shines on the evil and the good (Matthew 5:45). The weeds will be removed at ‘the harvest’! They can live among you, but there is a day of reckoning coming… there is a day where the tares are separated from the wheat, the useless plants are separated from the fruitful ones.

We are told several times that the chaff, or the tares, or the weeds of our lives will wither… they’ll burn… they’ll be separated from our lives in God’s own way, and in His own timing. I mean… remember that parable Jesus shared about the seeds falling on the ground in various places? One of those places was the rocky or shallow-soil areas… He’d commented later how those roots can’t get very deep into the soil, and when the sun comes up and ‘the heat is on’, they wither and die from lack of depth… their roots are not protected.

Similarly, John the Baptist was telling the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to one of his baptisms, he was telling them of the coming of Jesus and “…Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Matthew 3:12) It’s that separation that we are reminded of several times… see… there are those who want to remind you of these weeds in your life… there are those who seem to just watch and wait for you to make a mistake… to fail… to show signs of imperfection. It’s actually all they can do really… you’ll find that those who tear you down or point out your flaws are as big as they’ll ever be… they can’t get any better and they know it… so, they tear you down so you seem as small, or smaller than they are!

We are ashamed of our own weeds though, too. Our own failings… or own misgivings, short-comings, and any of those not-so-pretty traits in our lives. These are scattered all through the field of our garden and they make us shudder with shame… make us shrink a little in guilt… in disgust… even in repulsive retreat. Our tendency is to get in there and remove these weeds… to tear them out, to cut them back, to hide the shame of their presence. “How did these unsightly traits ever gain ground in my life“, you may ask yourself… you may ask God… you may wonder.