Pilgrim Road Blog Photo

Pilgrim Road Blog Photo

Monday, April 15, 2013

The Weasel Thingy

When I lived in the city, my vegetable gardens were productive.  Despite a teeny plot of ground with lousy, clay soil, I enjoyed tomatoes, cukes and even those rascally zuchinni that spread under the fence to my neighbor's yard.  When we pulled up our stakes and moved to the suburbs (though in my heart I will always be a city girl), I contemplated the magical veggie garden I would sport: lush, overflowing, Jack-n'-the-beanstalk even.  Ignorance, my friends, is decidedly not bliss.

The town we live in used to be farmland.  I rejoiced at the loamy dirty in my yard!  The folks who lived here before even grew grapes in the back.  I was already fixin' salad and zuchinni bread in my wild imagination.

Gardening is delightful and relaxing, said no one ever who has worked one... OK, maybe someone has said that, but no one as lazy as me.  My dear adopted dad came over with the tiller.  Weeds were pulled.  Planks were laid down in the geometry suggested by The Square Foot Garden.  Fertilizer was raked in, seeds planted, water sprinkled.  Sun shone.  Plastic fence was laced about the perimeter.

Plants grew.  Veggies formed.

And then HE came.

Because I really don't know what particular animal this was, I have opted to call him "The Weasel Thingy".  One afternoon, as I sat in my breezeway surveying all I had planted, he stood up.  In-the-middle-of-my-garden.  He was gnawing heartily on a young, beautiful zuchinni plant.  He looked right at me, bold and, I think laughing, there in broad daylight.  If I owned a gun I would have shot him on the spot.  (Apologies to my mother and sister in laws).

I ran shrieking into the yard (apologies to my very normal neighbors).  That varmint stared me down, vegetable in paws, till the last second.  Then, under the fence he scurried with my food.  I was madder than a wet hen.

The next day I went out to smile over my labors, forgetting the pain of the day before, only to find my entire garden plot completely decimated.  Not a blossom, not a baby cuke, not a tomato plant, not a pepper unscathed.  Weasel Thingy had been back overnight, along with Bambi and maybe Thumper too.  The whole garden was demolished. Ruined.  By critters both stealth and crafty, travelling in broad daylight and under the cover of darkness.

I tried to plant another garden the following year, but the Weasel Thingy remembered...  And that was that.  Too much work, no reward.  Done.

I was defeated by the Weasel Thingy.

So, as I over-spiritualise everything, I pondered this today...

I wonder what the Weasel Thingy is in your life.  What is it that steals your good fruit, that robs your joy, that takes the things you've labored to produce?

For me, it's always been fear.  But unlike my veggie garden, I can't simply be stripped over and over and expect to live the life I'm called to live.  I'm learning to fight back, to protect what matters, and to grow.

If I wanted it badly enough, I could grow stuff.  I could plant the fence much deeper to keep the diggers out, and I could make it much higher to keep the deer out.  I could tend the weeds better and use the chemicals that kill bugs and worms.  But I'm not willing to work that hard.  I'll get tomatoes from the farmer's market.

Life, however, doesn't work that way.  We can't get internal peace, freedom and victory from somebody else.  We've got to cultivate it ourselves.  There's no getting around the work.  The work of FAITH.  Of believing what God says in His word, and DOING it.  The good news of the gospel is this: God is on our side and wants us to bear much fruit.  He's got the good soil.  He's all about our killing the Weasel Thingy's of doubt and fear, and keeping out the pests of idolatry and pride.

Mt. 13:3-9
“A farmer went out to sow his seed.  As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.  Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow.  But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants.  Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.  Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

Remember this:  The work of God is to believe.  Not to prove our goodness by our own effort.  Your life grows because it's protected from evil, and sits on good soil in a sunny, and sometimes rainy place.  Your job is to listen to God and cooperate with what He says.  He's the farmer, and he'll keep the Weasel Thingy out.  But not if you invite it in to dine.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann



3 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing, I can so relate to this on many levels

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  2. I think everyone can relate...but how good God is to keep working with us, even when our ground is hard, even when our fences are down...Bless you friend!

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