Monday, May 16, 2011

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Weeds




Yesterday, while our family worked in the yard, I weeded the flower beds. Later, while rocking Aaron to sleep, I thought about how those weeds grow so fast. They come up all over, even penetrating the plastic barrier under the mulch. They're not always ugly looking plants, and for all I know, they may have been the plants that flourished and made our land beautiful before it was covered with homes, schools, and churches; but they take away from the beauty of the design of our flower beds. They also take the nutrients that we want our plants to use to grow bright and beautiful.

Those weeds are so much like the sin in our lives. Some might say that our sins are a part of who we are and we need to accept them as part of what makes us beautiful and unique. Like David said in Psalms 51:5, "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me." However, like the weeds in our yard, just because sin was in me first, it definitely doesn't make me more beautiful.

Like weeds, sin is strong and penetrating; it can sneak up in the blink of an eye. Even though we think we've pulled it up by its roots, it keeps coming back.

Thankfully, my Jesus said "...for I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners" (Matthew 9:13). "Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring [us] to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit..." (1 Peter 3:18). "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9.).

Dear God, thank you for calling me, a sinner, to you. Thank you for sending your son, Jesus, to save me from my sins. Thank you for always providing a way of escape from every temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13). Please take my weeds out, and help me to "throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let [me] run with perseverance the race marked out for [me]" (Hebrews 12:1).