If you know me, then you may be aware that I tend to a “garden” in my back porch. You could say I keep it so that I can have something to take care of, as I have been wanting a pet for some time now.
The garden, Marissa’s Secret But Not So Secret Garden, first started with my pomegranate trees. These plants were easily my favorite out of my sprout varieties. One of these particular seedlings always seemed to grow bigger and faster than the other pomegranate trees. Exited, I planted this particular sprout into a bigger cup for it to grow and flourish.
My plants teach me many things, one of these being lessons. This very pomegranate plant, the one that always seemed prettier and faster at growing, didn’t grow too well when I transfered it from the cup to the back yard itself. I recall praying for it daily as I would water it and pamper it. It was my favorite, and I thought to myself (one of my first lessons): “It would be so sad if it died; it worked so hard to grow and get where it’s at”.
Isn’t that so similar to our lives? How many people say that about me? About you? Ergo, the phrase “never give up” comes into play. Can you imagine how many lives could affect this world but don’t because they gave up on themselves?
Believe it or not, this very plant had more to teach me about life. When God spared my plant, I soon began to see why. This one was always different from the rest; growing faster and, at the time, more beautiful than the others. Yet, still different. In my time of being exited as it, day by day, got bigger, I one day walked out on my daily watering job and literally gasped in horror when I arrived at my favorite sprout.
My beautiful pomegranate tree wasn’t in fact a tree. I, in the several months I had spent watering and loving this plant, had been harboring a weed. A pest, a burden, something hated in the eyes of we gardeners.
I was absolutely horrified and extremely disappointed.
Thus the second lesson my garden has taught me: There are many things in life that you can brood over that will, in the end, disappoint you. Things that will hurt you, turn out to not be what you expected, or many other things like that.
So what about you? Do you harbor something that does nothing more than suck up the life you give it? Is it an addiction, a sin, or a habit? God has called us to a life of purity and he leads us to bigger and better places if we listen.
See, weeds deceive us, very similarly to how they deceived me. They give off the impression that they really are something special, something to be cared for. But, in the end, no matter how beautiful that plant, that weed, it still sucks the life and space from the rest of your crops. They always hurt in the end.
Waste not your water on the weed. Instead, focus on the beatiful and true trees of the world; those who can always return your love and attention with the fruits of their labor.
