HEARTLAND | Meredith Flynn
Just when I thought I’d gotten them all…
Do household chores ever teach you lessons? Mine do. Especially the ones I don’t do very often or very well, and as a newlywed and new homeowner, that’s almost everything.
For instance, I just spent two years hours weeding the yard. A summer’s worth of busy weekends coupled with Central Illinois’ desert-like conditions have left us living on a brown, scratchy rectangle of something that used to be grass, I think. Nothing has grown for months – except weeds. Tall, scraggly, thorny and thriving. I told myself I’d spend an hour pulling as many as I could.
And for a few minutes, it went well. I felt hearty and worthwhile, like a real Midwesterner working her land. But it all went south when I looked around and realized it looked the same as it had 20 minutes ago. I quickly spiraled into this cycle: see a weed (“this is bad”), bend down to pull it (“this is really bad”), somewhat successfully get it out of the ground (“well, OK, that was a good one), see the next one (“this is bad”).
I went on like that for a few minutes before an even more dangerous thought crept into my head: How did we ever let it get this bad?
You know where I’m going with this. I knew it right there in the yard. My morning of manual labor runs pretty parallel to my spiritual life (and maybe yours too). We see something we don’t like, try to get rid of it, have some success in overcoming it, right before we see the next thing. And all the while, the question haunts us: How did it get this bad? Without me even knowing it? It might be one nagging sin, or a mindset, or a bad habit. But, when looked at through the lens of trying to extinguish it forever, it can be enough to send us running indoors.
And I thought about it plenty of times that morning, just turning in my work gloves and moving on to the next, hopefully easier, task. What kept me there was that God was talking. Not audibly, but the lesson was clear, and here’s what He was saying: I’m here, I’m here, I’m here. Not necessarily to help you weed the yard, but as you see things in your life that shouldn’t be there, I’m here. And as you work on removing those things, I’m here. On the good days and the bad ones too. And when you see the next thing we need to work on, I’m here.
Sanctification isn’t done in an hour, as much as I wish it could be. But God is a patient and present gardener, much more patient and present than I’ll ever be. He sticks with His task of transforming us, and even lets us have a part in it. What area is He showing you that needs some work? And how is He sustaining you in the process?
iB2 News 