I hate weeds. Not just a little, if you can hate anything a little. Really - hate - weeds. They are just useless. They dilute the desirable, pollute the beautiful, and choke out the productive. Weeds are an endless source of frustration to me, especially this time of year. I love to pull them and leave them laying out on the concrete in plain sight as an example to other weeds. Sadly, I've never known this to help anything. Weeds just grow. You can pluck them all up, spray poison (or some other wholeistic concoction if you like), napalm... they'll be gone one moment, back the next. The war is real and never-ending.
This is the way gardens work. God gave Adam and Eve dominion over the garden and maybe that involved some weed-pulling. But our lives are also gardens. At no point are we ever done pulling the weeds. Scripture tells us that the adversary loves to plant tares in important places. Places where they will frustrate the most, and damage the most. Jesus told us that sometimes we are to leave those tares alone because pulling them does more damage than good. For me, the lesson is that as much as I hate looking at weeds, it's not always helpful to yank them. Sometimes we must get used to the idea that the weed will be there - right in the middle of all that beauty. Perhaps I should think of it this way: it isn't mine to pull.
Except in my own yard. I'm yanking it.
