10. Weeds and Sins
"A weed is just a plant in the wrong place at the wrong time." Whoever wrote that didn't have a garden. After spending way too much of my day wrestling with crabgrass, dandelions and other assorted noncultivars today, I almost titled these thoughts "Weeds Are Sins." That may seem extreme, but after several hours of weeding I might be able to make a case for it.
At the very least, we can say weeds are connected to sin - as the book of Genesis clearly shows. When Adam failed his first job as a gardener and ate from the wrong plant in the Garden of Eden, he was told clearly: "Cursed is the ground because of you … It will produce thorns and thistles for you" (Genesis 3:17-18).
Since then, weeds have been with us, and we humans have found little good to say about them. Do you remember, in the book of Job, what the final words of Job were when he ended his defense? He expressed his frustration and misery with the most discouraging words he could think of (and he thought of quite a few): "… let thorns grow instead of wheat, and foul weeds instead of barley" (Job 31:40 ESV). Then there is Jesus' parable of the weeds and wheat found in Matthew 13:24-30. It was a parable that he knew would make a point in a hand-powered farm-to-fork agrarian society.
But why do I think weeds are like sin? If your garden is anything like mine, you know weeding takes a lot of time. I sometimes put down weed killer (don't worry, I buy the eco-friendly kind), but the weeds still show up. They not only show up, but they seem to always find the hardest places to dig them out. And if I don't dig them out, they not only thrive, they multiply (ever wonder why weeds seem to produce so many more offspring than the plants you want?), and as they multiply they spread – even (and I must say this quietly) into my neighbor's yard.
The parallels with sin are all too obvious. Even with frequent use of God's sin/weed killer, the Bible, sins still show up – often in the most unexpected areas of life. And you know what happens if we don't dig them out as soon as we become aware of them. Neither the "I'll get the weeds next week" nor the "I'll quit this sin soon" plans ever seem to work out very well.
What's the answer? There doesn't seem to be an easy one in either case. Pulling out weeds and tearing out sins are both exhausting work and seem to be never-ending jobs. But when I see how much better things are with the latest outgrowths of crabgrass, envy, dandelions, gossip, and other weeds and sins cut back, I realize it really is worth the ongoing effort.
And when we begin to get control of the weeds/sins in our lives we can concentrate on the job of growing the good plants – the faith and good works that God wants to see in our lives – as Isaiah says: "For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations" (Isaiah 61:11).
After all, that's what the gardens and people of God are supposed to be like: "… gardens beside a river, like aloes planted by the Lord, like cedars beside the waters" (Numbers 24:6) – and as you see, there is no mention of weeds.