I am an irresponsible gardener.

I love flowers. I love to tend to them. I love to look at them. I love to pick them. I love to put them in quaint, delicate vases throughout my home. I love the way they announce freshness! I love to leave work, arrive, park my car by the curb, and stare at the rock garden in my front yard…admiring the way the roses climb the rock and the ivy spills. I can sit mesmerized for minutes, looking at the loveliness of God…that He would give us such lavish things to enjoy.

That is exactly where my irresponsibility comes into play. I pick what I enjoy. I don’t read books about them. I don’t prepare my soil like I have been told I should. I don’t even know most of their names. Every spring, I go to the places that sell perennials and when I see one I like the looks of, I pick it up and see how tall the label says it will grow. I bring it home, plop it in the ground in the appropriate place for its height and let it be. I used to not even pay attention to height….thus the explanation for my humongous Sedum smack in the front of my rock garden.
I have a delightful friend who pays attention to details. She has the most healing of gardens. Sitting and staring at its beauty will soothe your soul and decompress your mind. Double blessing if you are sipping her tea too. I can’t tell you how many times she has asked me about certain flowers in my garden and all I can give her, for an answer, is a wave of my hand and a laughing, “I don’t know, I just loved it.”
Imagine my delight in the month of June this year to find out one of the plants I had been tending to so lovingly is a big, lush weed. It looked so pretty in a fern like way beside my Clematis. I had arranged a gift of rocks around the two and often studied them from my kitchen window. They sort of had that Biblical look (Lily by the tomb) I thought. I love the look of rough stone up against the delicacy of a flower and in this case I loved the angle and off centered coupling of the plants too. Now that I have been told it is a weed by someone who would know, I have to go yank it up before any more tours of my yard produce gentle chuckles of amusement. My enjoyment was based on irresponsible ignorance.

How many times have I played out that same scenario spiritually? How many times have I allowed something to grow in my heart because I chose to be irresponsible or chose not to know?

Matthew 13:36-43 Then, leaving the crowds outside, Jesus went into the house. His disciples said, “Please explain to us the story of the weeds in the field.”
Jesus replied, “The Son of Man is the farmer who plants the good seed. The field is the world, and the good seed represents the people of the Kingdom. The weeds are the people who belong to the evil one. The enemy who planted the weeds among the wheat is the devil. The harvest is the end of the world, and the harvesters are the angels.
Just as the weeds are sorted out and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the world. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will remove from His Kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. And the angels will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Then the righteous will shine like the sun in their Father’s Kingdom. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”

Phyllis