For this week’s blog post, we are going to take a look at gardening. Yes, you read that correctly. What does gardening have to do with our mission to spread God’s Word? You may be surprised at the parallels that growing a garden and pulling the weeds out of that garden actually have to do with spreading God’s Word. Keep reading!
The ability to grow a beautiful garden is a skill that takes much time to perfect. Knowing when to water the plants, how much sun each type of plant should get, and making sure the soil has the right mix of nutrients can really only be perfected by a master gardener. An amateur gardener may fall into the error of giving too much water and washing away the nutrients in the soil, or planting a variety of plant that needs partial sun in direct sunlight. But none of these mistakes are as costly or as damaging as allowing weeds to grow among the flowers in your garden.
Some weeds are so pretty to look at, it’s hard to understand exactly why they are considered bad for the rest of the garden. These pretty weeds have a beautiful outward appearance, while the unseen damage being done underground is killing off the rest of the flowers near them. To better understand the effect weeds have on a garden, I did some research on weeds. Here is what I found:
- Weeds cause the soil around them to clump, instead of staying loose, which causes the flowers around them to get too much water, or none at all. It also causes the ground to be dangerous to walk on because it makes the soil unstable.
- Weeds literally strangle the roots of healthy flowers underground, which while unseen above ground will end up killing off the flowers as they are robbed from nutrients.
- Weeds attract all sorts of insects which usually leave the weeds alone and feed on the flowers.
- Weeds carry diseases which can render the soil useless for any flowers planted at a later time unless the ground is treated and cared for prior to planting the flowers.
So what does all this gardening talk have to do with spreading God’s Word? Sometimes there are people that are as dangerous to those around them as weeds are to flowers. Like weeds, these people cause others around them to lose focus on God and become encompassed with gossip, hearsay, and pride. These people “strangle” the good fruits of those around them by making the focus become blurry and instead of focusing on God, the focus becomes addressing all the gossip and chaos that has been created. All of this takes time and energy, which could be better spent on spreading God’s Word. And anything not taking us closer to God is taking us a step in the wrong direction. These “weeds” also attract other people who are narcissistic, negative, and gossipers. This causes even more “weeds” to appear in the garden and the flowers have a much harder time flourishing when they are surrounded by weeds.
The tricky part is when these weeds look pretty. Some people look like they are doing a great job and in some respect they are, but all the damage being done underground is a thousand times more harmful than any good they bring with them. Even if a weed appears to be doing good works it must be plucked from the garden to allow the flowers to flourish if there is damage being done underground. It takes time to get things back to normal after removing weeds from a garden, but with proper care and by re-tilling the soil, the flowers can once again grow strong.
All of this leads to one main point. If there are people around you who are damaging your garden, get rid of them quickly. The longer they remain around you, the more damage they are able to do. I have seen people who appear to do a wonderful job promoting God’s Word, but in fact are causing insurmountable damage to those around them. The devil works in clever and tricky ways. One of those ways is to plant weeds in the gardens we try to grow to prevent real beauty from flourishing. It is our job, and our duty to get rid of the weeds around us that take away from our ability to stand tall in the Light!
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