Cleaning the Fence row

I've been cleaning the fence row today. It didn't look quite as bad as the picture, but it took me a couple of hours to cut back the brush so I could get to some cinder blocks to put along the bottom of the fence to keep our dogs in.

As I was working I wondered how long it had been since this fence row had been cleared. Judging by the size of some of the trees and bushes and what little I know about the history of the house, I'd say at least 5 years. Not only were there bushes and even some trees but also honeysuckle and wild grape vines, so it was a tangled mess--I cut one tree down and it didn't fall, because the vines and neighboring trees were holding it up. If this fence row had been cleaned regularly, every 2-3 years, there wouldn't be any trees and the vines wouldn't be nearly as troublesome as they were. As we all know these plants didn't grow up in the fence row over night.

As I thought about this later this evening I thought that our lives are not that much different from the fence row. The devil plants all kinds of little seeds in our hearts, with the express purpose of causing us to sin. It may that our hearts are so full of worldly things that we no longer have time for spiritual things. It may be that something addictive has crept into our hearts and is slowly choking out the good in our lives. When these things mature, many people finally wake up and ask themselves, "How did these "weeds" get so big???" Well, it didn't happen overnight. No, little by little, over a period of time, these weeds grew and grew and grew until they took over.

Do we have to let the spiritual weeds take over? No, because 1 Cor. 10:13 promises that God will not allow us to be tempted above what we are able, but will with the temptation make a way of escape. But what happens is that while we're busy with other things, the weeds begin to grow. They're kind of like what we always called careless weeds--they grow so slow that they only way they can go to seed is if you're really careless.

We all need to stop from time to time and examine our lives to see if we are allowing the weeds to flourish in our heart.