Overgrown

A new week, a new project. A veggie patch. You might think that this is a pretty poor time of the year to be starting a veggie patch - just as we head into Autumn with Winter right around the corner but the inspiration and drive to do it is here now so it is happening hear and now. That and it gives us a good few months to be able to prepare fully for the Spring.

It is not the most amazingly lit patch but we will have to make do

It is easy to confuse a new project with a blank canvas, when it comes to gardening this is absolutely not the case. In fact, if you can at any point get to a blank canvas you have already done pretty well. I think Jesus understood this and it is possibly one of the reasons that he used the imagery of a gardener to describe God. The truth is that in our little patch, and in everyone's lives there are an abundance of weeds. Life sucking, fast spreading, tough to kill, deep rooted, weeds. If these are not dealt with you don't have a veggie patch. What  you have is at best a patch of problem-inducing dirt that is going to overgrow and starve anything useful that you try to plant.

Other than the single Rhubarb plant and the grape vine everything green had to go

Looking from this perspective it is very easy to understand that a piece of ground is completely incapable of ridding itself of weeds, where the weeds are they will continue to grow. Simple as that. Yet it is amazing how quick we are to draw the conclusion that we are able to de-weed our own lives. The ever growing self help section of Waterstones stands as testament to this. Offering up every kind of burying, ignoring and weed-hiding technique there is. Pouring into the false hope that we are able to tackle our own habitual sins, change the broken condition of our hearts and patch ourselves up so we can live the way we were meant to.

Our very wobbly makeshift work bench made the woodwork that much more exciting

The hope is false because we cannot change those things about ourselves. We can maybe change the way that the symptoms of our brokenness manifest in our lives or we can simply ignore the fact that we are overgrown with desires and behaviours that we cannot shake. But at the end of the day we are as helpless as a patch of dirt trying to de-weed itself.

We made stakes to support the panels for edging the patch

The only way that our little patch was ever going to be productive was if we got the tools out, got stuck in and worked hard at removing all the junk that was bedded in. So, being gardeners that wanted our patch of land as productive as it could be that is exactly what we did. Similarly the only way that any of us is going to grow in maturity and start bearing fruits is if we allow the divine gardener in to clear out the choking weeds of sin from our lives and sow the seeds of the gospel in us.

re-installing edging around the patch

Our first foray into this latest adventure was satisfyingly hard work, there was lots to dig up and some parts were more work than others (we found rather a large piece of metal nestled a good half meter down in the ground - it was one of the harder parts). We completely overhauled the ground and it took some time, all the while excitedly discussing plans the for the future. 'Go big or go home' my brother would say. I imagine God is equally as thrilled while he is working on our lives. He sees that his work in saving us is glorious and he gets excited about the culmination of his work in us which will be ... well glorious.

During our discussions there was also the recognition that while these first steps are big ones the journey of our veggie patch will be continuous work. De-weeding is going to have to be a day by day, intentional activity. There will also be some big milestones along the way such as the construction of the lean-to green house which is going to cost us, but it will be worth it. Again this must be the practice of all of us who wish to grow in Christ-likeness. We are to recognise, challenge and do our uttermost to give over these things to God and allow him to fix us.

Whether you are totally overgrown with sin or you are steadily waging the ongoing war with your weeds, my encouragement to you is this - let the Gardener till you, de-weed you, prune you and burn up in you all that is not from him. While we cannot kill sin by ourselves we can make the choice to allow God in, to release to him the most insidious of our problems and trust that as the good gardener he is shaping us for a mind bogglingly exciting, hopeful, glorious future.

We found a few gems while digging from the previous occupier of the patch

N.B  Once again the pictures that feature me were (unsurprisingly) not taken by me but the rest were. Thanks to Charlie and David.

Title font used: 'Bleeding Cowboys'