...Even weeds...

I have been weeding a friend's garden this summer - my gift to her as her health declines due to metatastic breast cancer.

Another friend of hers had volunteered to put the flower garden in order earlier in the spring: thinning things out --- moving some plants around --- weeding ---- mulching. I would just come by once a week to tend the garden and pull the weeds that inevitably invite themselves in to stay. Good plan.

Well, the earlier shape up didn’t happen so by the time I got there in early June, the garden was having a riotous good time in taking over all the available space and crowding out anything timid enough to beg for some room to grow. With some coaching about what was needed, the best I could do was to rip out the invasive stuff; patiently track down the weed stems to their source and pull out the roots; trim other things back in order to find and liberate the perennials that needed some space and light in order to simply survive.

In the midst of my second day of weeding, I was grumbling to myself about weeds and invasive plants and why do they have to be like that anyway. There were so many everywhere! I had no hope of being able to remove them all...but then, God’s Whisper in my ear said something about Abundance.

There was a purpose for all those plants I was enthusiastically tossing over my shoulder into a brush pile assuming they were "junk". Just because I don’t want something to grow in a particular place doesn’t mean that there was no purpose for it. It is just rooting itself where "I" don't want it to grow -- my problem, not God's! 

How many times do I overlook that Abundant Nature and only focus narrowly on the little piece of my world right in front of me instead of looking at the wholeness of God's gracious vision?

God’s Abundance is just that --- lavish, over-the-top, unrestrained, extravagant, bountiful, prolific

--- weeds and all.