This came to me as I was helping my church with some maintenance landscaping. |
Within the past couple of months I have rededicated my life to Jesus, and have been struggling as a convert. I thought that if I started "walking the walk", instead of just "talking the talk", that I would be able to grow in Christ. One of the biggest questions I have had most of my life was, how do i know if God is really listening to my every thought? I showed up one Saturday morning to the church, after agreeing to come by and help out. When I got there, I noticed that there were more men than women, and questioned whether or not my being there was even going to be effective enough to help. I walked up to the leader of the maintenance ministry and asked what he needed me to do, and he looked around and told me to start by pulling some of the weeds in the bushes they had planted by the buildings. My first thought was, "are you kidding me", but did it anyways. A couple hours went by, and it was getting really hot outside and was considering going home. I took a break and rested for a few minutes. The pastor of the church stopped by to check how things were going and as I passed him in the lobby of the church he thanked me for coming out to help. I simply stated, "no problem", to him. He responded with, "it's that easy, huh?" There were other people around, so I wasn't sure whether he was talking to me, or someone else, but I walked away telling myself, "yeah, actually it is, I had nothing better to do today anyways." So, I went back out and continued pulling weeds. I noticed that there were weeds in the gravel bedding that was around the grounds and decided that was my next area. As I was pulling the weeds, I noticed that the roots were alot softer than the ones that were in the regular ground, and began trying to come up with a conclusion as to why the roots of the weeds in the dirt were firmly planted compared to the ones in the rocks. For some reason, I started going through a list of people in the church and asking myself if their roots were firmly planted or loose. Then, I started naming members of my family, and so on and so forth. All the sudden I felt this wave of emotion come over me and had to run into the building and grab a piece of paper so I could write. I didn't know what I was going to write, or why I felt I had to, but, something told me to find a pen and paper. As I wrote, it made sense to me, and this is what I wrote: "I am to God, as weeds are to me; My flesh is the root of my sins. I can only hope that when Jesus comes back that my roots will not keep me from being pulled into Heaven." It didn't take me long to realize that God was speaking to my heart, and that I had been on holy ground all day. God speaks to us in his own time, in his own ways. He finds things that will make us stop and think. Things that will send a clear message to all of us. |