Stop Weeding the Thistles

dianarasmussen

9 years ago

Stop weeding the thistles? Really? I had this illustrated to me just this week. Guess I needed to hear it twice in order to sink in lol!

MY LESSON IN THISTLES #1

This is a picture of our garden – well, what was supposed to be our garden. This year ‘life’ happened and we never got a chance to plant it. Oh well. Life is good. So we are giving the land a rest I guess.

For Mother’s Day my two youngest gave me a lavender plant. I would love to raise lavender and plant a whole field of it. So I went to the library and did some research. It does grow here in WI, but it is kind of picky about soil. Anyway, about a month ago I took the small potted plant and put it up in the garden area. I thought hey, it will sink or swim, right? I didn’t go check it. I didn’t even go water it. God – if you want it to grow, it will grow. I left it alone for about a month, well ok, two.

Two days ago I went to see if it made it or not. I really wasn’t expecting it to grow. After all, I didn’t do anything to help it. Can you imagine my surprise when I saw this?

Not only had it grown it had tripled in size! Despite all the thistles growing around it. Despite all my lack of attention – it still grew! I guess God really does know how to make things grow – even when I don’t cooperate!

MY LESSON IN THISTLES #2

We have these hostas that we got from my mother-in-law about 8 years ago. When I first got married, we planted some at our church, then it was Summit Baptist. Bob and I got married at that church a while back too. We fed and watered them while we went there. Long story short, the Pastor left to go to another church in TX, and the church closed. It was vacant for 3 years. Bob and I moved to another town, and hooked up with some old friends and started with JAM (Janesville Apostolic Ministries) about a year ago. Another long story, short – JAM bought the old Summit Baptist Building. Yeah – really!

And guess what – the hostas were still there. Again, they have been ignored for at least 3 years. They were very overgrown with weeds so the boys thought they would kill the weeds. They bought the spray stuff and sprayed around the hostas. Some of the weed killer leeched in the soil and some of the good hostas died. And many were damaged. All because we were trying to kill the weeds. Overkill the weeds and the good ones get hurt too.

I wonder how that applies to us and our church family? Hmmmm…I remember a good book and a great story…

He told another story. “God’s kingdom is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. That night, while his hired men were asleep, his enemy sowed thistles all through the wheat and slipped away before dawn. When the first green shoots appeared and the grain began to form, the thistles showed up, too.

“The farmhands came to the farmer and said, ‘Master, that was clean seed you planted, wasn’t it? Where did these thistles come from?’

“He answered, ‘Some enemy did this.’

“The farmhands asked, ‘Should we weed out the thistles?’

“He said, ‘No, if you weed the thistles, you’ll pull up the wheat, too. Let them grow together until harvest time. Then I’ll instruct the harvesters to pull up the thistles and tie them in bundles for the fire, then gather the wheat and put it in the barn.’” (Matthew 13: 24-30 MSG)