I used my Saturday Power
Hour to weed the “flower” beds by my front door this morning. If this doesn’t seem like an event to write
about, let me explain. It’s July in
Oklahoma which means the morning temps are already in the 90’s and it’s been
upper 90’s for weeks and triple digits for the last few days. It is a heat advisory weekend. It will be hot, hot, hot until Halloween; therefore
not the best morning to be outside gardening. However, the choice was between sweating
profusely and having to stare at weeds that were almost as tall as I am. The house was two weeks away from looking abandoned.
I really want my house to look
nice. I want to present a pleasing image
to the neighborhood or at least not be THAT
house. So, out in the heat I went.
As I was
The unfortunate part is that life doesn’t work that
way. The only thing I don’t have to work
for is God’s love; everything else requires planning and participation. You might be saying, “You can pay people to
weed.” Why yes I could; that still takes
planning to earn the money to pay professionals. I need to be willing to do the hard work in
order to enjoy the fruits of my labor.
Our spiritual life is the same way. I have been spending time getting back to
basics, intentionally carving time to read scripture, examine my life and
actively seek God’s presence and direction.
Returning to a schedule, a rhythm, of my everyday life to plot a course
in the direction I want to go. If you
don’t plot your course, you won’t get where you want to be. You get tossed about from place to
place. Most people wake up and wonder
how they got here. I don’t want to be
that person. Not being that person takes
work. That’s where desire and reality
collide. I don’t want to put in the hard
work of examining my life. It takes
time, it can be painful because I make mistakes, I would rather binge watch
Sherlock. So things slide, the calendar
fills up with events and I am very busy. Then just like the weeds, I wake up one day
and realize I am overgrown. I forgot to schedule the important things. I forgot that I can’t do everything. I forgot to orient my to-do list around the
person I am called to be. So, when this
happens, it takes extra effort to weed and prune and clear away the weeds that
have encroached on my purpose. It takes
more work than if I had keep the constant, steady rhythm of daily discipline
but the alternative is letting the weeds overrun the place.
While I am weeding I ask myself these questions. Does my current calendar clearly show that I
invest my energy in what I called to be?
If not, what needs to go? Does my
calendar include time and space to listen to God? Invest in relationships? Have
fun? If not, I am too busy and I need to
stop. Am I better than I was yesterday,
last month, last year? This is tricky
because there are seasons and if you work on one part of your life, you will then
turn back around and work on another.
Maturing is more of a spiral than a straight line. Here’s my biggest questions: Does my energy go to the things I am uniquely called to do? There are many things that distract me, have I chosen the best thing? These questions are hard
and the answers usually require more work but they are worth the work because the
alternative is a life of weeds.
