Gardening at Night

If I am not mistaken this was a title to an early R.E.M. song, but I think the phrase lends itself to a vivid picture of the gospel. I don't know what your spiritual life is like at all, but I know that in my own heart there are times when the weeds seem to grow overnight. One day life is good, God is good, and then BAM! weeds are everywhere choking the remaining amount of life out of you. That's how my front flowerbeds were this past week. I had been so busy the last 3 weeks that I hadn't had time to work in the yard like I needed to and wanted to. So I spent several hours pulling weeds. The sad thing is that I didn't get all of them because there was just too much. As I looked at my yard yesterday during the thunderstorm I realized that many of the weeds I pulled were beginning to grow back already. Isn't that how are spiritual lives are? We work hard to become close to God and then something happens and it seems like overnight we drift from that close communion with God. It dawned on me this week while I was bent over pulling weeds that our faith is just like those flowerbeds. It doesn't come easy, we certainly can't neglect it, and if we allow the weeds to go unchecked for too long they will overtake the shrubs and flowers and snuff the life out of them. Maybe this week we all need to spend some time tending our soul gardens...