This week has been so incredibly beautiful. The garden in the front and back yard of my home is at its peak before the heat of summer begins to incite stress on the plants. As I sit outside to read in the beauty of the morning or evening I marvel at the garden which Joyce so loved to work and improve. After 3 years of toil and selecting various plants over and over again, this spring required very little additions to the garden. About the only work that has been required is the need to weed!
As I reflect on all the work Joyce put into her "living art project" it strikes me how closely her life resembled her garden. She worked diligently at the garden in order for it to produce beauty. It is not some random plants surprising us with their beauty. They were planned and cultivated to produce their beauty. The plants that could not stand the soil and heat conditions had to go to make room for plants that were better suited for the conditions and thus were more productive. Then there was the nurturing of the plants to bring them to maturity so they could show forth their "glory". Oh how Joyce loved to work in the garden. Well, as I said earlier, she did a good job of enabling the garden to show forth it's "glory".
The beauty of a person's life takes much the same type of "garden work." Unless we plant and cultivate certain qualities and characteristics within our spirit we will not have much beauty showing forth from our lives. The qualities of generosity, love, kindness, gentleness, peace, contentment, awe and wonder do not arise and exhibit themselves without being planted, cultivated, and nurtured. Only as they grow and become mature do their beauty become pronounced enough to "shine forth". The '"glory" of our lives is ultimately linked to the fruit of our lives which reflects God's handiwork in and upon our lives.
Weeding in the garden is a constant just as is it necessary to weed out of our lives those "things" which will overtake the cultivated plantings of our lives. If I want to see the fruit of generosity shine forth then I must make sure that greed, fear of the future, self-indulgence, and various other "weeds" remain plucked out of the "garden of my soul."
In other happenings: I just received a call from a monument dealer wanting to send literature about a burial plot. The caller asked my age and then asked if I was married. I instinctively said yes and then quickly added, "wait a minute, I mean no". Then I had to explain that my wife had died 3 weeks ago. To this information the caller said, "Oh my god, I am so sorry for this call." The caller fumbled through the rest of the call and I found myself laughing at the awkwardness of the scenario. I didn't have the heart to tell the caller I won't be needing a burial plot as my wife was cremated so I probably will be too. So in a few days will come some junk mail about burial plots I will not be needing.
Enough of this post for today. It's time I go cultivate some good plants "in my soul" and do some more "weeding" at the same time!
Blessings
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Careful with that weeding Ray. Have you ever noticed that some "weeds" can produce a very beautiful flower. Yet we still call it a weed. Why? Because it has grown wild and unattended? Or just because someone, somewhere, announced it a weed and so therefore it is an unneeded plant. Sometimes, if you ask me, weeds will bring out the natural beauty of a plain and don't need to be weeded at all. So in my case, in my chaotic world, I say, Let the pretty weeds grow too. It just makes life...interesting.
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