Normally a Florida summer begins in May, if not late April.  True to form, the first two of weeks of that month brought temperatures in the 90s.  Air conditioners hummed in every neighborhood.  The tube of sun block sat at the ready whenever we wandered outside to check the progress of the garden, or actually work awhile weeding and fertilizing.  Keith cleaned out the fire pit because summer had arrived.

            Then on May 16 we woke to a temperature of 48 degrees.  The thermometer on our porch never broke 70, and a stiff breeze blew leaves and sand all over the carport.  The moment I stepped outside, I stopped, turned around and headed for the calendar.  Did someone turn back the clock?  No, it was still May, but as the week bore on, we were once again sipping coffee by a fire in the early hours of the day.  Even the sparrows were confused.  They always fend for themselves in the summer, leaving the bird feeder to their avian kin, but a couple of them landed that week and took advantage of the free meal.  This unseasonable weather had everyone mixed up, but we all enjoyed it nonetheless, knowing it would soon disappear and the heat return, as it most certainly has.

            The Bible talks about things being “in season and out of season,” especially preaching the gospel, 1 Tim 4:2.  We have actually lived places where Keith was told that he should not preach about certain subjects.  In one place it was “not the right time” for it, and in the other he was to avoid those subjects “from now on.”  Why?  Because certain people in the audience might not like it.  Did they need it?  Yes, but they might not like it.  Asked when the right time was, the answer was, “I don’t know, but not now.”

            Have you noticed that preaching styles change about as much as fashion styles?  Some of the preaching I heard as a child would never be accepted today.  Some of the preaching I hear nowadays would never have been accepted when I was a child.  That tells me that what makes something in season or out of season is the hearers, not the preachers.  We have a couple of good examples in the book of Acts.

            After preaching a sermon on the day of Pentecost that accused the listeners of murdering the Son of God, they were “pricked in the heart.”  They said, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?”  They experienced a heartfelt repentance and obeyed the command to be baptized (Acts 2).  That preaching must have been “in season.”

            Stephen experienced the opposite.  After a sermon accusing his listeners of being “stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears,” and “resisting the Holy Spirit” they were “cut to the heart.”  (Acts 7)  Was Stephen’s sermon any tougher than Peter’s?  No, not a bit.  Both preachers hit what they aimed at—the hearts of the listeners, one audience being “pricked in the heart” and the other being “cut to the heart.” But the reactions were certainly different.  Stephen’s audience stoned him to death.  I guess that sermon was “out of season.”

            Too many times we expect the preacher or teacher to perform according to our rules and expectations, forgetting that he has a higher authority to answer to.  God warns him that he will be held responsible for the souls he speaks to if he doesn’t tell them what they need to hear.

            The next time we think a sermon is “unseasonable,” remember, that probably means we need to listen to it.  Our reaction is not the preacher’s fault, but our own.  We are responsible for our hearts.  It is just as wrong to tell a preacher not to preach when it is “out of season” as it is to withhold the gospel from a good and honest heart, a time when it is “in season.”  That’s what Paul told Timothy.  When we do so we may be condemning souls to eternal death, along with our own.
 
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.  2 Tim 4:1-5.
 
Dene Ward

Canning tomatoes is one of the more difficult garden season chores.  You wash each and every tomato.  You scald each and every tomato.  You pound ice blocks till your arms ache in order to shock and cool each and every scalded tomato.  You peel each and every tomato and finally you cut up each and every tomato.  How many?  In the old days about 5 five gallon buckets full, enough to make 40+ quarts.  Then you sterilize jars, pack jars, and process jars.  Only 7 fit in the canner at a time, so you go through that at least 6 times.

            And you will have more failures to seal with canned tomatoes than any other thing you can.  As you pack them in, pushing down to make room, you must be very careful not to let the juice spill over into the threads of the jar.  And just in case you did that heinous crime, you take a damp cloth and wipe each thread of each jar.  Tomato pulp will keep a perfectly good jar, lid, and ring from sealing.

            In order to have that many tomatoes you must be willing to cut up a few that are half-rotten, disposing of the soft, pulpy, stinky parts—and boy howdy, can they stink!—in order to save sometimes just a bite or two of tomato.  Now that there are only two of us, I usually limit myself to 20 + quarts.  I still put one in every pot of spaghetti sauce, one in every pot of chili, and one in every pot of minestrone, as well as a few other recipes, it’s just that I don’t make as many of those things as I did with two boys in the house.  Now I can afford to be a little profligate.  If I pick up a tomato with a large bad spot, I am just as likely to toss the whole thing rather than try to save the bite or two that is good, especially if it is a small tomato to begin with.  Why go to all that work—washing, scalding, shocking, peeling, cutting up, packing—for a mere teaspoon of tomato?

            But isn’t that what God and Jesus did for us?  For narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leads unto life, and few are they that find it. Matt 7:14.

            The Son of God, the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Phil 2:6-8.  And he did that for a half—no!--for a more than half rotten tomato of a world.  He did that to save a remnant, a mere teaspoon of souls who would care enough to listen and obey the call. 

           Sometimes, by the end of the day, when my arms are aching, my fingers are nicked and the cuts burning from acidic tomato juice, my back and feet are killing me from standing for hours, and I am drenched with sweat from the steamy kitchen, I am ready to toss even the mostly good tomatoes, the ones with only a tiny bad spot, because it means extra work beyond a quick slice or two.  Aren’t you glad God did not feel that way about us?  It wasn’t just a half rotten world he came to save, it was a bunch of half rotten individuals in that world, of which you and I are just a few.
 
But what is God's reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. Rom 11:4-5

Dene Ward

We kept seeing them on the side of the road—two to three feet high, blue flowers clustered at the top of tall stems with long narrow leaves.  We called them wild irises because that’s what they looked like, and I wished aloud that we had some.  So Keith stopped one afternoon on the way home from work and dug up a few.  I looked them up in my wildflower book and found their true name—spiderwort.  What an ugly name, I thought, and called them my wild irises instead. 

            Then we learned about them.  They spread faster than anything we had ever planted, in places we really didn’t want them, but the worst was this—they were only beautiful early in the morning or right after a rain.  Otherwise those blooms turned black and ugly by noon, earlier in the heat of summer.  If ever there was a fair weather flower, this was it. 

            Just as I misjudged the beauty of those wildflowers, I fear that some of us may be mistaken about how God judges our beauty.  Dressing up on Sunday morning is not what matters to God.  Having a tie on is not what makes a man worthy to serve at the Lord’s Table.  While I dress carefully on Sundays, one of the few times I get to wear a pretty dress these days, it has little to do with whether God thinks I am beautiful.  To God, beauty is seen in faithfulness, in righteous and holy lives, and in kindness shown to others.  In many cases, we don’t look particularly pretty while doing those things. 

            We never look better to God than when we are bruised and bloody from a fight with Satan, battered from overcoming the temptation to sin.  We are pretty when we are clad in old clothes cleaning up after our families, and handsome when plastered with sweat and dirt from doing the yard work for a widow.  We are lovely to God when we sit around in our old blue jeans talking about the Bible to a friend who asked a question, or inviting a neighbor to a Bible study.  We are beautiful to Him when our bodies are thin and our eyes sunken from facing an illness that came only because so many years ago the Devil succeeded with Adam, yet we face it with trust in a God who has a plan.  We are especially gorgeous to Him when our bodies are old and bent, and our hair gray and thin, having lived a life of faithfulness.

            Spiderworts are pretty only when things are easy, only when life is fun.  When that’s over, they live up to their name—black and ugly, a weed everyone could do without.  Don’t make God feel that way about you.
 
I am faint and sore bruised: I have groaned because of the tumult of my heart. Lord, all my desire is before you; And my groaning is not hidden from you. My heart throbs, my strength fails me: As for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me. My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my plague; And my kinsmen stand afar off… in you, O Jehovah, do I hope: You will answer, O Lord my God.  Psa 38:8-11,15.
 
Dene Ward

My back and feet were aching and my hands cramped from peeling by the time I finished.  The seals on the pint jars of apple butter popped and I started the clean-up of unused jars and lids, the large pot covered with sticky residue, and the measuring cups and spoons.  Finally it was over. 

            The apple tree had borne far more than ever before.  I had made several pies, a couple dozen muffins and a cake, and canned two dozen quarts of applesauce, a gallon of apple juice, a dozen pints of apple jelly, half a dozen quarts of apple pie filling, and finally a half dozen jars of apple butter.

            As I stood over a sink full of soapy water I muttered, “I hope I never see another apple as long as I live.”  The next spring my apple tree died.

            When it became apparent that we couldn’t save the tree, Keith looked at me and muttered something about not really knowing what that might mean—the fact that I could curse a tree and it up and die for no obvious reason so soon afterward.  Just exactly who, or what, was he married to?

            The county agent saved my reputation.  The tree was planted too close to an oak, he said.  Oaks carry a disease that kills fruit trees, especially apples and peaches.  Sure enough, we soon lost our peach tree too.

            All these years later, the story came up again, and with it a new perspective.  Here I had cursed a tree that bore too much, while the Lord cursed one that bore too little. 

            And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again." And his disciples heard it.  And as they passed by it in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered to its roots, Mark 11:13,14,20.

            You might do as I did at first and wonder why the Lord would expect to find figs when it wasn’t fig season.  Yet every commentator I read said that figs produce their fruit before they leaf out.  When the Lord saw a fig tree fully leafed out, he had every right to expect to see some fruit, even if it was small and green.  As a gardener I know that nearly every plant has at least one “early-riser”—a tomato or pepper or blueberry that ripens before the others.  Even if there was nothing ripe, there should have been plenty of fruit hanging there, gradually ripening on the leafy branches.

            Now how about us?  Is anything ripening on our branches?  Is the fruit of the Spirit perhaps still a little green, but nonetheless visible as we become more and more what he would have us be?  Or are we nothing but leafy show: lots of pretty clothes on Sunday morning but behavior like the rest of the world throughout the week?  Lots of talk in Bible class, but no good works in the community?  Quoting catchphrases to our neighbors, but never opening the Book in our own homes?  More concerned with winning arguments than winning souls?

            The Lord will come looking for figs in our lives, more than likely at a season in which we are not expecting him.  He told us we would recognize false teachers by their fruits (Matt 7:16-20).  What will he recognize about us from ours or will there even be any for him to see?
 
And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, Col 1:9,10.
 
Dene Ward
             
 

Gardeners know about ladybugs.  These tiny beetles can eat up to 50,000 aphids each in their two to three year lifespan.  That isn’t all they eat.  Leaf hoppers and mites and even some types of plant mildew make a meal for them.  You can buy a supply of ladybugs if you want.  I forget the exact numbers, but you can get several thousand for about $25.  Or you could let a bunch of dandelions grow up between the rows of your vegetables.  Evidently those attract ladybugs, but dandelions in the garden?  I don’t think so. 

            We have never had many ladybugs that I have noticed.  A few days ago though, as I bent to weed the okra yet again, I suddenly noticed on the leaf right under my nose an oval orange bug with black spots on it.  A ladybug!  I looked them up afterward, and I think the most interesting discovery was how they fend off their predators.  They give off a stinky secretion from their joints.  They are the skunks of the insect world.

            Several times in the Old Testament you see the phrase, “They became a stench in the nostrils…”  More than once God’s people began to stink up the place, either to the enemy they defeated by the hand of God, or to God himself when they began to live like their enemies.

            The same thing can happen to us.  I remember when we lived in town and occasionally had one of those knocks on the door.  Usually those folks never came back—not because we were rude, but because we obviously knew the word of God and were not afraid to answer the questions they pose to get your interest.  I think the fact that we had an answer to begin with threw them off track.  One time we saw the same people come down our street a few weeks later.  When they got to our property line, they actually crossed the street so they wouldn’t be walking any closer to us than they had to, then crossed back to get to our next door neighbors.  I guess we had begun to smell.

            Funny how the same thing can smell good to one and not the other.  Paul said, For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life, 2 Cor 2:15,16.  When Paul and his entourage preached, some people liked it and some didn’t.  When we live the word of God in front of people, especially when we speak it, the same thing will happen to us.

            Maybe that makes us ladybugs, saving the world from the pests with the sword of the spirit, the word of God, and saving ourselves the same way—repelling our foes with a smell they simply cannot stand—the sweet aroma of redemption.  Isn’t that a good enough reason to get out your vial of God’s perfume this morning, and become a little more familiar with it?  God is counting on us ladybugs.
 
But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.  2 Cor 2:14.
 
Dene Ward

We love this season.  You never know what will pop up where.

            Several years ago we started planting wildflowers, a patch here one year and a patch there the next, babying them for exactly one summer, then letting them do their own thing.  Every spring we eagerly await the results.  Last year black-eyed Susans sprang up where we had never planted them.  This year rain lilies rose in a larger clump and farther from the original bed than you would have thought possible.  The year before a bright yellow coreopsis suddenly bloomed way out in the field amid nothing but grass.  It’s exciting to see what can happen over the years from just one seed sown in the middle of five acres.

            I have had the same experience lately with my old Bible class literature.  Suddenly I received a drop ship order from one of the Bible book stores to an address nearly 2000 miles distant.  Yet the last name, an uncommon one especially considering the relatively small size of the brotherhood, was familiar.  It was the first name I didn’t know.  Was this the daughter, or maybe the daughter-in-law of a woman I taught thirty years ago?  Imagine that.

            Don’t you think the apostles had the same feelings when, years after they had sown the seed in a rough Gentile town, they had news of another group of disciples, or maybe several groups, in the same vicinity?  The power of God’s word screams out from the growth of the church in the ancient world and the way it changed history itself.

            I have had people who knew my parents in their younger years tell me of the things they did for them, things they still remembered and that obviously meant a lot.  Keith has had people come up to him and say, “I still have that letter you wrote me years ago.  It changed my life.”  And, “I remember that class you taught.  It helped me through a rough time.”

            We have opportunities every day to make a difference in someone’s life.  Too many times we ignore them because we don’t believe anything we say or do will make that much difference.  Let me tell you something.  It isn’t yourself you are demeaning by thinking that way—it’s God’s word and His power through that word.  When you help someone, when you speak a word of encouragement, when you act with kindness in a situation where no one else would have bothered, you are tapping into that power yourself and spreading the grace of God to others.  It may be just the “cup of cold water” Jesus mentions in Matt 10:42, but that cup can change a life. 

            I have lost count of the times people have said to me, “I remember when you…”   You know what?  Most of the time, I don’t remember it, but I thank God for sending some small amount of inspiration for me to say the right thing, even though I was perfectly oblivious at the time.  Truly He helps us in every circumstance.   

            When our lives are over, we should be able to walk out into the field and find little patches of grace that came from some seed we sowed, however inadvertently, years before.  Yellow daisies, white rain lilies, blue bachelors’ buttons, pink phlox, red cypress vines—you never know what you will get when you spread the word with an act of kindness or word of compassion--no matter how small it may seem to you!

            So put on your gardening gloves this morning and start planting.
 
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. Isa 55:10,11.
 
Dene Ward

“Those winter squash vines have grown a foot since that rain two days ago,” Keith mentioned as we drove into town one Tuesday morning.  “You can tell because the new growth is a different shade of green.”

            Indeed it is, I thought.  When spring comes, the new growth on the live oaks is a brighter shade I like to call “spring green.”  Even new growth on the roses is a different shade—a deep red.  New growth in plants is obvious.

            The New Testament is far too full of agricultural comparisons for me to pass this one by.  We are told ten times in the epistles to “grow” (auxano).  I may not be a Greek scholar, but I can run a program or look in a good, old-fashioned concordance for the same Greek word and where and how it’s used.  My question today is this:  is it just as obvious when we have new growth?  It ought to be.  So what will people see when I “grow” in this manner?

            2 Cor 9:10 tells me that the “fruits of my righteousness” will grow.  That certainly ought to be an obvious indicator.  If I am still struggling mightily, not just once in a while but constantly, to overcome the sins that had me captive before my conversion, then I am not growing as I ought to.  The time factor may be different for each one of us, but things should be improving.  I should become strong instead of fragile, someone who someday can help those who came from my identical circumstances.  If I cannot reach that point, something is amiss.

            Paul told the Colossians that their “knowledge” should be growing, 1:10.  When the same old chestnuts are tossed out in class, things that have been proved wrong by simple Bible study for years, I wonder if anyone is growing in knowledge.  Sitting on a pew will not do it.  It takes work, and it takes time.  It cannot be done in “14 minutes a day.”  I despair sometimes of the church ever reaching the point that it is once again known for its Bible knowledge as I see my Bible classes dwindling in number, and only frequented by older women.  When the new growth is only seen on the older vines, what does that say about our future?

            2 Cor 10:15 says my faith should be growing.  Do I show that with an ability to face trials in a more steady fashion than I used to?  Or do my words and actions, decrying God and questioning His love, show that I am no farther along than I was ten years ago?  Have I learned to accept His will and His ways, even when I do not understand them, or do I demand an explanation as if He were my child instead of the other way around?

            2 Pet 3:18 says we are to be growing in grace.  This one may be the most difficult one to assess, but think of this:  what does God’s grace excuse and pardon in you?  How patient was He when you were rebelling outright instead of just making ignorant and foolish mistakes? Now, how much grace do you grant to others who absentmindedly get in your way, who have their own problems on their minds and are hardly aware of your presence?  Your neighbors, your colleagues, fellow shoppers, the driver in the car ahead of you—if you are not showing the grace of God to these in an obvious way you have not grown in grace as you should have.  If you are looking for a reason to sigh loudly, to complain, to blow that horn, instead of searching diligently for a way to offer grace as it was offered to you, you need to think again about your progress in the gospel.   I do too.

            All of us, no matter how long we have been Christians, should be showing growth.  In every area of our lives all of us should be sporting a different shade of green.
 
Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Eph 4:15-16
 
Dene Ward

When you pull up any sort of plant by the roots, you are likely to pull up some soil as well, and often some wigglers you never knew were there.
 
           As I pulled up the more deeply rooted weeds around those morning glories, I often pulled up a few earthworms.  Earthworms are a good sign.  They work to cultivate the soil and leave it well fertilized.  Generally speaking, the more earthworms you find, the better your crop and the prettier your flowers.  But a few times I pulled up some ugly stuff--things that were not beneficial to the plants, things that would feed on the roots, and eventually kill them. 

            I couldn’t help but think of the “underground” among God’s people.  I think one of the most comforting things to know is that there are a few earthworms out there in the garden, good people quietly seeing to the things they can, visiting, calling, advising, teaching, and in the process defusing a few bombs before anyone even knows they are there.  They take care of the minor problems so the elders have the time to deal with the major ones.  In fact, because of their work, some of the major problems never come to pass.  They don’t worry about not getting their fair share of attention from those men either.  They are spiritually mature enough not to need constant coddling. 

            On the other hand, there might very well be a few uglies underground, roiling the waters, attempting to stir up controversy and dissatisfaction.  They often disguise themselves as earthworms, “just trying to make people think,” “playing Devil’s Advocate so we can get a helpful dialogue going.”  Those sorts of dialogues need a carefully chosen audience.  Instead of being careful of the babes who may not be ready for such a discussion, they are often actively seeking to turn their vulnerable minds from the simple Truth of the Gospel toward themselves and their own pet beliefs.  At best, they are careless of the souls of others.  When the church must take its attention away from its mission of saving the lost in order to pander to the egos of the bitter and undo the carelessness of the inconsiderate, the Devil does indeed have an advocate, and he is in control.  The more minions he has working underground, the fewer lost souls will be reached, and the fewer saved ones will make it to the end of the road.

            Think about that the next time you have a conversation, either in the church or with a lost soul out in the world.  What just reared its head above the soil line? Did it help a soul find the Lord, or did it raise antipathy toward the body for which Christ died?  Whose side are you working for? 
 
Now I beseech you brethren, mark those who are causing divisions and occasions of stumbling contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and turn away from them.  For they who are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own bellies, and by their smooth and fair speech, they beguile the hearts of the innocent, Rom 16:17,18.
 
Dene Ward

As I worked my way around that morning glory bed, I discovered some interesting things.  We had originally planted the seeds in concentric circles, and then as the vines grew we trained them to head to the center of the bed toward the huge metal trellis, a cow panel Keith had woven along half an old antenna pole and then stood up on its end toward the sky, fifteen feet high.  Every year they come back, but they aren’t in circles any longer.  They grow up wherever the seeds fall from the dried out blooms the year before.  The more weeds I pulled, the better I could see the vines, and a few surprises awaited me.

            More than once I had to be careful not to pull out a morning glory along with the weed.  The long spindly vines often clung to the weeds, and I had to carefully unwind them.  Sometimes as I unwound them I discovered that they were headed in the wrong direction—to the outer edge of the circle rather than toward the trellis.  These I carefully turned around until they were pointing the right way.

            Other times the vine was too tightly wound around the weed, using it as a trellis, despite the fact that it was nestled, supposedly safely, among its brother vines.  The only way I could get it loose was to break it off.  Those I was especially careful with, laying them along the ground pointing toward the true trellis, and watering them deeply.  Maybe they will survive and maybe not, but the only hope they had was the amputation.  Maybe they will live but their growth be stunted.  Maybe they will mend and grow again.  Time will tell and we all know that healing often hurts.

            And then there were the morning glories I found totally outside the bed, headed in no direction at all.  What to do?  Well, I guess I could have picked up a spade and a hoe and made the bed large enough to include them, but that would have been ridiculous unless we eventually wanted our whole yard to be one morning glory patch.  So I pulled a few, the ones that looked iffy to begin with, and transplanted others.  Will they live?  I don’t know, but they would have been mown down next weekend if I had done nothing.

            Another thing I discovered underneath all those weeds was new morning glories.  Some vines were only a couple of inches long.  But now they will have a chance.  They will not be choked out by the weeds that steal the nutrients from the soil and shade the sun.  New growth cannot happen if you don’t get rid of those weeds.

            Spend a few moments today thinking about the metaphors here.  Are you clinging to something besides the Lord?  Have you wandered away from His care?  Are you trying to make His flower bed bigger than He made it?  And, ultimately, are you headed in the right direction, toward the one trellis that reaches for the sky?
 
And he answered and said, He who sows the good seed is the Son of man, and the field is the world, and the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; and the weeds are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil; and the harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels.  As therefore the weeds are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be in the end of the world, Matt 13:37-40.
           
Dene Ward

The vegetable garden has taken all my time lately and the flower beds are showing it.  A few days ago I started the weeding, content to make a quarter “pie slice” in the circular morning glory bed.  The next day I took forty-five minutes out of my morning to finish. 

            The vines were doing fine once they got to the trellis, climbing over 12 feet high by now and blooming every morning, but the bed itself was ankle high not only in morning glories but also moneywort, wood sorrel, snake root, castor beans, and purslane, among other colorfully named weeds, plus a little grass as well.  I started with the previous day’s pie slice, amazed that so many of those rascals had once again sprung up overnight, but that was easily handled in about five minutes.

            I learned some things as I spent the time kneeling in the damp grass.  First, whenever you get down on their level, the dogs think you are ready to play.  Instantly the two of them were at my elbows, tails wagging, inundating me with doggy breath, and grunting for my time and affection.  So I gave them a few requisite pats, hugs, and praises as I meandered away from the bed before they could decide to throw themselves on their backs in the middle of it, begging for a belly rub.

            Finally they were satisfied and I started pulling weeds in earnest.  With my diminished vision I have to concentrate to see what I am doing.  I finished up another slice and stood up to catch my breath and my equilibrium.  When I looked back down I could hardly believe my eyes.  I thought I just weeded that section, but no, all I had done was pull up the moneywort.  The wood sorrel was still there, wiggling its little leaves at me in what I was sure was smug satisfaction.  So I bent once again and pulled it all up. When I finished I sat back on my haunches and looked it over.  Now I saw the snake root, not much of it to be sure, but it was odd that I had not seen it at all when it was by far the tallest weed in the bed. 

            Suddenly I made sense of it all.  I had to focus so hard to see one thing I was blinding myself to the others.  I looked for more of the taller plants and there were the rest of the snakeroots as if they were waving a flag at me saying, “Here we are!”  Then I looked for the purslanes’ creeping red stems and shiny green leaves and there they were, ready for the pulling.  Then the castor beans, and the cow vetch, and the grass—well, you get the point.  You will only see what you are looking for.

            Do you wonder why you cannot see your own faults?  Maybe it is because you are focused on everyone else’s.

            Do you wonder why you are so stressed about life?  Maybe it is because you are too focused on it—on paying the bills, handling the schedules, dealing with work problems—and not focused on the things that really matter.  Jesus tells us in more than one passage that focus on the wrong things can cost us our souls.

            Are you so focused on your own problems that you cannot see the problems of others?  Maybe that is why you are so down in the dumps all the time. 

            On the other hand, do you focus so much on your own failures that you cannot see your successes?  Maybe you have grown by leaps and bounds in the past few years.  You will never know it if all you do is tear yourself up over today’s failures.  Guess what?  Tomorrow morning I will have to pull a few more weeds from that morning glory bed, but I doubt it will take forty-five minutes.  The fact that a few grew back does not mean I should never have bothered to pull them all in the first place.

            Work on your focus today.  Train yourself in what to look for. Make sure you are seeing the things you need to see, rather than the things you want to see.  You will never reach a point where there are no weeds to pull, but you can totally eradicate some and make the others far less common.
 
For if these things (faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, love) are yours and abound, they make you to be neither idle nor unfruitful unto the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  For he who lacks these things is blind, seeing only what is near, having forgotten the cleansing from his old sins.  Wherefore brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure; for if you do these things, you shall never stumble, for thus shall be richly supplied unto you the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, 1 Pet 1:8-11.
 
Dene Ward