Sweetwater Presbyterian

Small in size, Large in Faith and Love

Devotion January 31, 2018

Greetings!
I realize this is the wrong time of year to talk about this… I mean walk outside today and it is cold, and the wind is cold, and the chill just sets into your bones when you go outside.
So thinking about doing things outdoors is not what would normally come to mind…. but even with the cold temperatures and the blowing wind, the sun is out and the sky is blue and I felt this wave of desire to be weeding..
Weeding? you say. Why would anyone have this desire to be weeding? Especially on a cold winter day - even if the sun is out.
But, for me, weeding is relaxing. There is just something therapeutic about gathering up all the weeding supplies (which isn’t much - just a bucket and those clunky weeding scissors which probably have a real name but I have always just called them weeding scissors and then I usually have a little hand shovel which I don’t use often but it is part of the supply kit) and finding a spot that needs weeding, very ungracefully getting down to weed level, knowing it will be a while before I just as ungracefully get back up….
And then you dig in - literally. I personally prefer the just grabbing the weeds and tugging and pulling and ripping those roots out of the ground and then putting them in the bucket. Just think about the how beneficial to ones frustrations to picture those frustrations as these weeds that you are jerking out of the ground….
You think about whatever and then grab a weed and with some force give it a strong tug and out comes that weed and with it a thin layer of a particular vexation of the last couple days. You grab another handful of weeds and the annoyances of the past week/month/several months/year begin to wane a little as your discontentments and disappointments and irritations seem to take on the face of these weeds.
And after an hour or so of pulling weeds, there is a calm that seems to have invaded the tenseness that existed before the weeding experience…..
Now I don’t think that there are any great annoyances that I’m wanting to abate today, but as I walked out of the door of my home and I looked at the beds around the foundation which currently don’t have any weeds because it is the middle of winter, but I envisioned warm evenings, sitting on the ground, pulling the weeds and enjoying the now cleaned out, prettier beds around the house, that feeling of accomplishment - accomplishment that you can actually see!
Now, what you know in the back of your head as you sit back and look at the nicely weeded bed with the plants that are suppose to be there able to breathe and flourish…. what you know is that next week you will be back at this same location pulling more weeds…. maybe not so many but still more weeds and so more pulling and still more pretty cheap therapy….
It made me think about the peace that Paul talks about when he tells us about how with God we can have a ‘peace that passes all understanding’. Now to get the peace from the irritations that have a tendency to weigh us down, I have to get down and get dirty and expend energy and sweat and use my supplies and take time and eventually go through all the effort of trying to get back up again….
But God says, if you just trust in me I can give you peace as well and you don’t have to go through all those gyrations of getting down and pulling weeds to get that peace… you just have to trust.
Now I realize that trusting can be just as hard for some as doing all that work to jerk out weeds firmly affixed to the soil…
But it is a free offer, no strings attached, no work required…. peace from God - just believe it!
Amen!

Joanne


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