Weeds! Weeds are my wilderness experience. A time for reflecting on my temptations and testings …. and removing them from my life. Weeds, even with their own specific beauty, are merely plants growing where they shouldn’t. Removing them by hand is an arduous task and rightly so because it gives me a chance to reflect at the same time. As I pluck each offending plant, I can review each vice, temptation or test in my life and then I can ‘pluck’ it from my habits. The manual labour involved forces me to consider the garden of my life and the weeding process that is required on a continuous basis. Each time I get down on my hands and knees to weed I will find fewer and fewer weeds to contend with … and then another load of compost brings in more weeds. When I can survey a neat and clean patch of the garden I in wonder if God can see the neat and clean patches in me? Oh, how the cycles in the garden reflect the cycles in my life …’Gardening with God’.
