In the Garden of Life

 

I've been busy or traveling a lot this summer so this past weekend finally caught up to a chore that was a long time coming, which is weeding our front yard garden. We have a lot of pretty flowers in the garden, but all the recent rain plus my lack of attention meant the place was overrun with unwelcome guests too. So I put some sunscreen and bug spray on and pulled away.

Some weeds were easy to identify and remove, so I took care of those first. Others were easy to locate but harder to remove; I had to put some elbow grease into getting a good grip and using good technique lest I throw out my back or else lose my game of tug of war. When the weeds finally gave up, I marveled at the long and intricate root system that I'd pulled up along with it. Still other weeds were hard to extract, intertwined as they were with other life that we were trying to preserve; the rose bush is especially pretty but its stems are full of thorns, so grabbing a handful of those along with weeds was painful even though I was wearing gloves. When I was done, there was a garbage can full of weeds, a garden that looked a bit better, and a sense of satisfaction for me, tempered with the fact that the weeds would be back and I'd have to do this all over again.

Reread that last paragraph and tell me there isn't a life parable in there.

"Sin" is a tricky concept to wade into, because people don't like being told that what they're doing is wrong, they don't want the government meddling into their business, and they sure as heck don't like the idea of God being mad or going to hell. But "sin" as a topic in my book also has some other dimensions to it, namely that it affects ourselves and it affects our connection to others. There are choices we can make that are bad for us and that hurt or separate us from those we love. So while I understand the sensitivity of certain aspects of discussing "sin," I wish we didn't therefore decide that we weren't allowed to talk about it at all. Because I think we can all agree that there are certain things we do that are bad for us and others, and it's important for us to figure out how we can not do those things.

This wouldn't be a debate if all sins were like the easy weeds, prominent in their sense of not belonging in our gardens and easy to pull out because they haven't taken much root in those gardens. And in fact, there are some behaviors of ours that are like this: we know they're wrong, they're not hard to give up, and we ought to just take a weekend and pull them out of our lives, metaphorically.

Ah, but some sins have entrenched themselves into our lives. Their roots run deep, so pulling them out takes some effort. When I was weeding, I waffled between putting in the effort to get certain weeds out all the way down to the root, versus being ok if I pulled and took most of them out but left the root, even though I knew that doing the latter meant doing battle with the same roots at a later date. Similarly, we can do shallow work on some of our sins, but in the process leave the roots in place where they can grow and complicate our lives later. Or, we can put in the hard work to dig down to the intricate root structure that we've allowed to grow in place and pull the whole thing out. It takes effort, so we have to make an intentional decision to put forth that effort rather than ignore or coast, and honestly I am often not in the mood to make that investment.

Worse are the weeds that have spiraled into the flowers in our lives. When I was weeding, I had to decide whether to take the time to untangle weed from flower, pull both out, or leave both alone. You can see how this is a metaphor for the choices we face when our sins entangle the good parts of our lives, and once again if I'm being honest with myself I take the easy way most of the time, leaving those weeds in place to flourish in the garden of my life.

One can extend the metaphor further but I've said enough. Life is full of flowers and weeds. What are willing to do to help the former to flourish and to root out the latter?