Weeding: The Labor & The Lesson

Photo by Fotocurd.

Weeding is some serious hard work. You're pulling, tugging, grabbing, and almost yelling at defiant weeds that flat out refuse to budge. It feels like their roots run from here to China the way I have to yank and wrestle with them. Sunday morning I got up and got inspired to lay waste to the weeds that have laid haste and occupation over my front and back yards.

I looked at each one with great contempt. I hate weeds. I hate how much work they make you put into getting rid of them. I hate how the little ones are usually the harder ones to uproot. It’s like, “Where do I even start in finding your ridiculous root and pulling you up? Huh, tell me that little weed, tell me that! You annoying, little…” I hate how I have to bend over, stoop low, engage my biceps, stretch my quads and use my hamstring muscles to really get at them. I hate the soreness I feel the next morning in those muscles because of that stupid wicked foliage.

But most of all, I hate that no matter how much hard labor I produce, how much grunting I bellow, huffing, puffing and sighing I do, the weeds are guaranteed to come back. Guaranteed. They are good at being bad, persistent at being not wanted.Weeds will always find a way to come back. Like that solitary one that has the balls, yes, the balls to even grow through a crack in a cemented sidewalk. It’s gotta take some straight up defiance and determination to grow through and maneuver around a rock-like substance, looking, seeking and searching for the right loophole to get through, push through. 

Weeds will always find a way to come back. Sin is exactly the same way. At its core, it represents rebellion against God’s love and his truth. It’s driven by selfishness and cares about nothing but feeding its desires. Sin will always find a way to come back, looking for the right moment, the right glance, the right him, the better her, that curve of the lips, the twist of the hips, shoulders broad, voice beckoning, aroma delicious, craving sensation, sweet tingles, savory lingers, salty licks, delicious desires, addictive priorities, perverted persuasions, whatever shape it can take to get into you, sin will do and keep on doing until it gets exactly what it wants: steal, kill and destroy.

Sin will always lead to death, attacking the emotional, mental and physical parts of you to finally get at what really ultimately matters – the spiritual you. If sin can get to this place and kill you spiritually (disabling and handicapping you will also suffice), it's done exactly what it desired to the first moment it tempted you to go with it to that place, that person, that thing that seemed more important than life itself because you had to have it, you had to have that. And sin wants you to believe its lie that it is what you need. 

Once you accept this depraved gospel, it appears to be over. Or is it? Just like a front lawn of aesthetic rocks overrun by out of control weeds needs a willing gardener to intervene, our souls need a master gardener too. That gardener is the kind who’s not only willing to weed out the sin and devices that so easily ensnare and trap us, but who's also provided the master weed killer to completely disarm sin, its power and slavery constraints on us. His ultimate killer: his love. Yes, his love. His love covers a multitude of sins and his love gave us his greatest gift ever – his son Jesus the Christ.

Jesus destroyed sin and its power when he sacrificed himself through death by cruxcification to cleanse the world of its sin. God is a loving creator but he's also a just judge. He has no tolerance for sin. And he requires that sin be dealt with, not looked over. He knows it kills the very life he's placed into us. It's like having the perfect, brilliantly white wedding dress and there's this thumbnail size speck of dark brown mud on it. The dress is still white but it's also still dirty. Sin will make you think you can be that dress and look good, minus that one speck of mud, which it tells you no one can see anyway. But the speck does matter because of all it represents: disobedience, rebellion, pride, lust, envy, immorality, murder, strife, jealously and so much more. 

There are no specks on God. There are no specks on God. He is light and in him no darkness dwells at all. His greatest desire is that people experience relationship with him. A personal relationship that heals and undoes the damages of sin, builds confidence in trusting him and invites him to pour his purposes and plans into lives surrendered to him. Our specks are criminal in their very nature when placed in front of the holiness of God. The specks of our sin require a just response from God. Sin brings judgement because its essence reeks of evil. Evil and holiness can not dwell together. God and sin can not dwell together. Being in relationship with him means your sin must be dealt with.

But instead of requiring us to receive the punishment of rebelling against him, he did something that didn't make sense. He stood in our place, taking on each and every one of our sins and the punishment that came with them - death. There can be no forgiveness for sins without the shedding of blood. Because of his great love, God shed the blood of his only son Jesus so each one of us would not have to experience the punishment of our sin. His love conquered sin as his judgement against sin was satisfied through Jesus. 

Being human doesn't prevent me from making mistakes that cause me to sin against God, myself and others. Living on this side of heaven is still a battle as I walk my faith out. But what it does mean is that I’m not compelled to stay in relationship with sin, bound to it, defenseless against it, or a slave under it. I deal with the very real presence of sin on a constant basis, not just in my life but in the lives of others around me and how sin leads us all to do some really selfish and at times tragic and obscene things. And yet I daily look to the master gardener in my life and I trust him to continue to weed out of me every sin and the effects of sin that his son died to set me free of. In return, he pours into me life as he kills the weeds. He hates them more than I ever could.