In the Garden

It's official, I'm just as lazy with this blog as I was with past ones. Eh. The following was a post I meant to publish (doesn't that sound official!) a few weeks ago. Actually, it's probably more like a month ago.

My father-in-law hauled over his rototiller and went through the backyard. I helped and later cleaned the gutters. As I worked in the yard, it struck me how many spiritual lessons could be garnered from the garden. One of the first was general frustration. How many of us want the beautiful yard but would rather not do the work? The thing is, you can't expect polished yard without sweat and hard work. People who can hire a landscaping company aren't a part of this example, by the way. Too frequently we forget that the finished product depends on the hard work and is a result of the sweat.

Another lesson is from weeds. Unattended weeds take over a yard quickly and get exponentially worse. Some have diabolical, pernicious root systems that are nearly impossible to remove. In that they're strikingly similar to the bad habits/regular sins. The longer we tolerate sin and refuse to eradicate our bad habits, the more they dig in. You can strike at the weed/the sin above ground, but the true way to get rid of it is to uproot it. And they're maddening to eradicate; every time you think you got rid of them, they come back.

I was digging up & turning over dirt next to the fence where the rototiller couldn't reach. Looking at my shovel and the length of the fence, I swore. Isn't the spiritual life the same? If we look too far ahead and see all the work we have to do, who wouldn't despair? Or think that it would be easier to give up than it would be to start? Once I did start digging & turning over the soil, I'd get a few feet and look back at how far I'd gone. Next I'd question the point of doing that much, since it felt like I hardly made a dent.

Progress is an odd thing in the spiritual life, since it often comes in times we don't expect. That is, those little good works that feel meaningless (like spading dirt along the fence). Those times of suffering when it felt like anything but growth. God knows us and perfectly understands what we need to grow--so He sends us people that love us, a Church to guide us, and consolations along the way.

Incidentally, thinking about the yardwork in a spiritual way was one of the few times I'd ever really felt like I was doing my work for the Lord. I've always known that I could, and I can connect the dots intellectually. But feeling it? That's new! Damn I'm a slow learner.