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Learning to Love a God Mystery

Rather than pretty flowers, I have been enjoying the weeds growing in my prayer garden this spring and summer. I first noticed my weeds around April when my husband commented about my weed garden. I’m sure he was assuming that I had every intention of pulling them up. The weeds had filled up the various terracotta planters that had once held my hopes of creating a prayer garden in my back yard. I intended to fill them with the leftover annuals from the front yard, but I never had time to plant last spring. So, there the pots sat, empty and waiting to be filled. There was a very cute Garden Angel, given to me by my sister, flying over the gathering of empty pots, and a cross that sticks out of the once flowering pots, but nothing else but dirt until the weeds showed up.

When I first noticed the weeds, I did intend to pull them up. But the longer I waited, the larger this one particular weed grew. I had never seen a weed like it and thought it had an uncanny resemblance to marijuana. I was fascinated by it, but didn’t want to let it grow if it was an illegal drug. After an internet search I was certain it was legal and left it to grow. When friends visited we invited them to view our weed garden. No one was really impressed, I can assure you. By May the weed was over six feet tall. I didn’t know what to think. By July, it was as tall as our house. We were busy packing and planning for our summer vacation, but I quickly made Ben pose for a picture with the weed before we went out of town. I was sure that it would die like all my favorite flowers do when we leave in July.


Rather than die, the weed just grew; it grew and grew and it is still growing, except that ever since a hard rain, it started leaning to the left. I’venever seen a weed like it, although I’ve been searching in abandoned fields.It is my special weed.

I was sure that God had some special insight that He would give me about thisweed. It would be easy to apply the truth that if you don’t pull up theweeds of sin in your life, they will grow so large that there is no pathway left—whichis now the case with my weed. I could also look at my weed as God’s specialprovision just for me. The weed has truly delighted me. It reminds me of whenGod had a plant grow to give shade to Jonah. I don’t think I will get madat God the way Jonah did when the weed shrivels—if it ever shrivels. I’mbeginning to have my doubts that it will ever die.

As I sat pondering my weed this past Sunday, I just had to accept that it isa mystery. God is like that, you know. He is a mystery because our finite mindscannot take Him in. Sometimes, we need to just acknowledge that He is there working,speaking into our lives and that we are doing the best job we can of receivingHis messages. Jesus said, I have spoken to you of earthly things and youdo not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things (John3:12). What I believe is that God loves me and that I can sense Him working inmy life, even through a weed.

 

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