We sold our home and moved out 7 weeks ago. While waiting for the processes to get into our next home. We are staying at my folks home while they are away. My mother is one to fill her world (postage stamp) lawn with beautiful flowers and plants. She has a knack for knowing where to place what. It is always beautiful. As I was out pulling weeds, and trimming bushes this evening, so many things came flooding back to me.
As you would guess, I was raised on fresh vegetables and surrounded by plants and flowers. Dad kept a few honey bee hives and we had a couple of milk cows, and raised our own meat.
Well, though I did not pay proper attention to learning the gardening and canning processes, I did catch some of the object lessons we were taught along the way.
Such as:
I learned that when I needed a break from mowing lawn, I could wash windows. (taking a break does not always mean 'doing nothing')
The windows we were washing were usually 'storm windows' that had been taken off for the summer replaced with screens. Now in the fall, wash them and put them on. As they each leaned against the house underneath the place they would be installed for the winter; we were each assigned our number of windows to do. Both sides must be clean and streak free. As Dad would come around while we were finishing the window he would say; " Now is it clean with no smudges or streaks?" I was always confident (at least the first one) that it was perfect. Dad would pick up the window and hold it up to the sun, and inevitably there were smudges and streaks. I would go back to cleaning up the streaks and smudges. Dad would say something like; " That is just like our life. We all think we are so good and clean; then we hold our life up to the SON we see how much we need HIS cleansing."
Doing our share of pulling weeds reaped spiritual lessons also. It was taught again to my oldest son when he was being cared for by his Grandma while I worked. He and Grandma were weeding the garden. He was not very happy about the weeding chore and wanted to play ball. His reasoning with Grandma was; "What difference does it make, weeds are normal, why do we have to pull them out all the time!" To that, Grandma went and got some 'chicken wire'. She said, "OK, lets put this around 1 tomato plant and not pull the weeds around it. Just let it be normal." Throughout the summer, that plant was left alone. The others were nurtured, weeded and cared for. It was not long and the damage was obvious. The plant was small and the weeds were tall. The tomatoes were small and few. "You see," said Grandma, "Those weeds are just like sin. They look and feel harmless. It's not a big deal. It's just a little fib and doesn't hurt anyone." IF we do not pull that sin out of our life, it grows big, strong and tall. It will take over our life and make us sick and weak." You see, just like we need to keep the weeds pulled from the plant, we must keep the sin out of our life." You can see the difference. The plants that were taken care of are strong and healthy and the tomatoes are many and large!" "We have to keep pulling the normal sin out of our life, and care for ourselves with God's Word and prayer, so we can bare lots of fruit for Jesus."
Just one more thing, my parents did right!
Until Then,
Katie Grove
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