Posts
Now for the thousands of Silk Flower lovers (and I am one of them) they have an integral part in our lives. I have a good Florist friend and excellent florist I might add, who for the most part has stated that "silks" were a necessary part of her business, but she much prefers "fresh flowers" (florist lingo). Just this past year, she acquired "silks" that were so real that EVEN I couldn't tell they were silk..even close up......I had to touch them to know. Now that's a good replica of the real thing! "Silks" don't have to contend with weeds or sunlight or lack of water. "Silks" don't have to be hovered over or coddled..maybe a bit of dusting but that's all.
Now with daylilies and all other live plants, that's a different story. Because I love to hybridize daylilies, speculating and anticipating what the flower will become once it "escapes" out of that little black pearl, I do almost coddle them. Actually, I just put them in the refrigerator vegetable drawer until the following spring (or as in last summer, they didn't get planted until August). After the seeds are stratified they really only need 3 weeks, but because of my colder zone 5A they bloom so late in the season they can't go in the same year. The following may they get planted in rows, with special markers stating the breeding cross so I can observe the characteristics of the plants once they are in flower. So here I was coddling them (well actually hand watering them from the rain barrels and then applying mulch to give them a better chance at staying moist until germination (which builds up the soil for the years to come) and keeps them from heaving out of the ground when the Spring weather vacillates between thawing and freezing. the spring weather of thawing and Then I spot all the weeds that LOVE the coddling also, so now I have to drop all the coddling until I get those awful, vigorous weeds out of there.
I tell myself "Nancy, FOCUS on the weeds!" Down bends the back, aerobics in motion, straddling the rows, stretching as far as I can reach without tipping over, happily and victoriously ridding the bed of all those horrible, persistent weeds. Oh what a relief it is...until a few days later, and especially after a rain, MORE weeds pop up! At that point, I can just 'hear' the daylilies saying, "We are real flowers with lots of other pretty flowers surrounding us BUT now there are weeds growing underground and you can't see them and they will be sprouting and showing their ugly heads soon, competing for our beauty!". "We want to flourish but the weeds are distracting us and taking all our nutrition and moisture so we can't become what we were meant to be when we were just little black pearls". "I know, maybe some fertilizer will do the trick, or more sun, or warmer soil".."maybe we can out-grow the weeds!"
But the truth is, as the Master Gardener already knows, without proper care (weeding) AND nourishment (fertile soil) AND proper location, a plant will never grow as it was intended to be.
The truth rings out, that unless we as human beings, don't bother to take care of the weeds in our own lives we can and will have as much difficulty as the daylily to become what God intended us to be. As any seasoned gardener well knows, if plants in the garden are left alone, then both weeds and trees will invade and are allowed to grow until the plants will eventually give up and become so puny as to not be seen among all the encumbrances....and unfortunately , some plants eventually die out completely.
As the human race so easily portrays:
We tend to blame God..we want Him to weed out all the unnecessary things in our lives..we want a quick fix to the situation....we just wish He would wave His magic wand and everything would be OK (for the moment, at least!). Then, when everything starts going smooth (or so it seems) at that time, MORE WEEDS come!
Weeds of Distress
Weeds of Disappointments
Weeds of Bitterness
Weeds of Fear
Weeds of Anxiety
Weeds of Unbelief
The list goes on and on.....
But God....
gives us the tools to dig out the weeds of our lives....not just gloves to keep out fingers clean, but digging tools to get down and serious about even finding all those underground Weeds (ie; SIN) that hold us back, that holds back from the very best that God has to offer. Just as a gardener uses the right tools to eradicate the weeds, so do we.... but for us, it is the Word of God, the Bible.
It makes sense;
He the Creator, the
Master Gardener knows us so well....
He tells us not to let the sun go down on our wrath...but do we?..yes..way too many times.
He also gives a warning that if we do, the devil gets a foothold.
He tells us Vengeance is His..but we justify the vengeance as: "they deserve it" etc. etc. ...all the time the devil's getting a stronger and deeper foothold in our lives....all the time that awful quack grass that is SO HARD to get rid of grows deeper and longer, breaking off when we shallowly weed it out, multiplying double when we just pruned it because of not giving it the proper weeding. It's not easy!
The proper weeding for Quackgrass Sins is:
" Forgive seventy times seven"....we think we are good if we forgive even seven times!
It's not easy ....to be" meek instead of standing your ground",
to "return a blessing when you are cursed".
The principles seem so difficult, but they are so perfect...because they work! But we will never know the results of good thorough weeding unless we obey what Jesus told us..and that means obeying with Faith, not with apathetic, half-hearted obedience. That's weeding the Quack grass the wrong way and more Quack (Sin) will follow, twice as bad if not even more so!
I admit, that in the natural it doesn't make sense when our Maker, The Man Who created us, tells us, unequivocally," LOVE COVERS A MULTITUDE OF SINS"- BUT IT DOES!! Even when you think you have done the best and most consistent weeding you have ever done in your life, the weeds will come back...that's human nature.
BUT if your life is mulched with LOVE, not the feel-good love, or the conditional love, but the lasting love..the love that:
Turns the other cheek
Lets God do the judging
Goes the second mile
Prays for your enemy.......the list of God's Ways goes on and on......and the weeds of sin come out so much easier....
He is waiting for us to apply what we know....then we will we can reap the blessings God has been wanting to give us...
AND
so that we can be a blessing to others,
true Salt and Light to a darkened world,
bringing to them Jesus with skin on,
being His hands and feet to our brothers,
our neighbors,
the poor and needy...until He comes again.
We can't possibly do that, without it feeling like a burden unless we see ourselves as needing to rid out selves of our own weeds so that we are free to soak in the Sonlight and the Showers of Blessings He intended for US to have, when we were once only a tiny pearl of a seed in our Mother's womb.
We are not silk flowers...but alive and waiting and looking to be all that we can be, flourishing like fresh flowers in His Kingdom!
I tell myself "Nancy, FOCUS on the weeds!" Down bends the back, aerobics in motion, straddling the rows, stretching as far as I can reach without tipping over, happily and victoriously ridding the bed of all those horrible, persistent weeds. Oh what a relief it is...until a few days later, and especially after a rain, MORE weeds pop up! At that point, I can just 'hear' the daylilies saying, "We are real flowers with lots of other pretty flowers surrounding us BUT now there are weeds growing underground and you can't see them and they will be sprouting and showing their ugly heads soon, competing for our beauty!". "We want to flourish but the weeds are distracting us and taking all our nutrition and moisture so we can't become what we were meant to be when we were just little black pearls". "I know, maybe some fertilizer will do the trick, or more sun, or warmer soil".."maybe we can out-grow the weeds!"
But the truth is, as the Master Gardener already knows, without proper care (weeding) AND nourishment (fertile soil) AND proper location, a plant will never grow as it was intended to be.
The truth rings out, that unless we as human beings, don't bother to take care of the weeds in our own lives we can and will have as much difficulty as the daylily to become what God intended us to be. As any seasoned gardener well knows, if plants in the garden are left alone, then both weeds and trees will invade and are allowed to grow until the plants will eventually give up and become so puny as to not be seen among all the encumbrances....and unfortunately , some plants eventually die out completely.
As the human race so easily portrays:
We tend to blame God..we want Him to weed out all the unnecessary things in our lives..we want a quick fix to the situation....we just wish He would wave His magic wand and everything would be OK (for the moment, at least!). Then, when everything starts going smooth (or so it seems) at that time, MORE WEEDS come!
Weeds of Distress
Weeds of Disappointments
Weeds of Bitterness
Weeds of Fear
Weeds of Anxiety
Weeds of Unbelief
The list goes on and on.....
But God....
gives us the tools to dig out the weeds of our lives....not just gloves to keep out fingers clean, but digging tools to get down and serious about even finding all those underground Weeds (ie; SIN) that hold us back, that holds back from the very best that God has to offer. Just as a gardener uses the right tools to eradicate the weeds, so do we.... but for us, it is the Word of God, the Bible.
It makes sense;
He the Creator, the
Master Gardener knows us so well....
He tells us not to let the sun go down on our wrath...but do we?..yes..way too many times.
He also gives a warning that if we do, the devil gets a foothold.
He tells us Vengeance is His..but we justify the vengeance as: "they deserve it" etc. etc. ...all the time the devil's getting a stronger and deeper foothold in our lives....all the time that awful quack grass that is SO HARD to get rid of grows deeper and longer, breaking off when we shallowly weed it out, multiplying double when we just pruned it because of not giving it the proper weeding. It's not easy!
The proper weeding for Quackgrass Sins is:
" Forgive seventy times seven"....we think we are good if we forgive even seven times!
It's not easy ....to be" meek instead of standing your ground",
to "return a blessing when you are cursed".
The principles seem so difficult, but they are so perfect...because they work! But we will never know the results of good thorough weeding unless we obey what Jesus told us..and that means obeying with Faith, not with apathetic, half-hearted obedience. That's weeding the Quack grass the wrong way and more Quack (Sin) will follow, twice as bad if not even more so!
I admit, that in the natural it doesn't make sense when our Maker, The Man Who created us, tells us, unequivocally," LOVE COVERS A MULTITUDE OF SINS"- BUT IT DOES!! Even when you think you have done the best and most consistent weeding you have ever done in your life, the weeds will come back...that's human nature.
BUT if your life is mulched with LOVE, not the feel-good love, or the conditional love, but the lasting love..the love that:
Turns the other cheek
Lets God do the judging
Goes the second mile
Prays for your enemy.......the list of God's Ways goes on and on......and the weeds of sin come out so much easier....
He is waiting for us to apply what we know....then we will we can reap the blessings God has been wanting to give us...
AND
so that we can be a blessing to others,
true Salt and Light to a darkened world,
bringing to them Jesus with skin on,
being His hands and feet to our brothers,
our neighbors,
the poor and needy...until He comes again.
We can't possibly do that, without it feeling like a burden unless we see ourselves as needing to rid out selves of our own weeds so that we are free to soak in the Sonlight and the Showers of Blessings He intended for US to have, when we were once only a tiny pearl of a seed in our Mother's womb.
We are not silk flowers...but alive and waiting and looking to be all that we can be, flourishing like fresh flowers in His Kingdom!
No comments:
Post a Comment