Weeds and Work
A few years ago, I wrote about my garden. Now I live in a one floor condo community and my garden is small, but the principles are the same. In this excerpt from a soon to released reprint of Down a Country Road, I recall having a more extensive garden .
“Ah, the scent and sights of an early summer morning. I like to wander through the garden in the morning before the sun burns off the dew diamonds glistening on the daisies. The mock orange releases its heady fragrance. Iris and lupins brighten the borders. Hummingbirds seek out the delphiniums. Petunias come into their own.
Over in the vegetable garden everything seems to be happening at once. Lettuce and radishes, spinach and peas, scallions and garlic are well along. Every dawn tomato plants display new leaves and flowers. The lush growth of early summer seems miraculous.
I wander the garden, wanting to see with my own eyes every new bud, every flower, every growth spurt. Aside from the few annuals we plant every year, the flowerbeds almost take care of themselves. Or do they?
Not really. The gardens at our former house took years of trial and error, transplanting, and labor. After ten years the vegetable garden with its raised beds and winding paths still required a struggle with weeds and worms. Seeing me out on my knees, Mary Helen often chided, “Why don’t you cut back on veggies and flowers. Take it a little easier.”
So when we downsized, Mary Helen assumed I would let nature take its course. But I can’t seem to bring myself to sit in a rocker and watch nature overrun the borders and lawns. My fingers start to itch. Images of perennial borders, raised vegetable plots, pathways through the woods, and bridges over the swampy places pop into my restless mind. Without the satisfaction of a daily stroll past beds of annuals and borders riotous with blooming perennials, life would seem pallid and colorless. Where’s the fun when there are no sore muscles and grubby fingernails? Besides, Mary Helen loves to bring in armloads of flowers to grace the house.
You guessed it. We had hardly moved into our new, smaller house before I was outside grubbing in the dirt. Surely there’s a lesson here.
Almost anything beautiful requires hard work. The monotonous practice of the budding pianist. The years of poverty of the acclaimed painter. Beautiful marriages, happy families, revived churches; all take lots of work and care—sweat and tears. Every day.
Someone has said that the thing about the Christian life is that it is so daily. Like a garden it requires daily prayer and obedience, daily worship and confession, daily concern for others. “Always give yourself fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”[1]
True, Christian living is dependent on God’s ongoing gifts of grace. And our garden would be a wasteland without the right mix of sunshine and rain—things over which we have no control. We would be foolish to forget that whatever spiritual edifice we want to erect, whether it be a godly marriage, a Christ-centered home, an ethical business, or a unified church cannot happen without God’s grace. His grace, however, moves us; not to sit back and expect God to do everything, but to pitch in with effort and energy.
No wonder James writes, “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. . . . Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.”[2]
And so we respond;
O Master, let me walk with Thee
In lowly paths of service free;
Teach me Thy secret; help me bear
The strain of toil, the fret of care.[3]
Like itchy gardeners working away in the soil, genuine Christians get their fingers dirty serving others. They know that doing what is good and true requires discipline and hard work. Sinning is easy—just relax and let your old nature do what it wants—doing what is right takes effort.
Father, help me through your Spirit, to have both faith and good works. Without you I can do nothing good. But help me not to use your promises as an excuse to relax and do nothing. Help me to labor in your service, to work long and hard to do what is good and true and merciful and loving. May others see a life adorned with genuine good deeds. Help me not to get weary in well doing. And help me to keep down the weeds of selfishness and pride and unconcern and lethargy and complacency so love and mercy may flower. In Jesus’ name.”
[Watch for news of the reprint of the devotional book, Down a Country Road]
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[1] 1 Cor. 15:58
[2] James 2:17,18
[3] Hymn, O Master, Let me Walk with Thee by Washington Gladden
