Life gardening!
I am not much of a gardener… but I do love flowers, so every year I visit a garden centre, get a few trays of annuals and get my hands dirty planting them out in pots. Usually, I can remember to water them enough, and the tiny amount of time, energy and money I put in rewards me with colourful flowers to brighten up our patio.
Annuals seem fairly simple – stick them in a pot with decent potting compost, keep things watered and that’s all you need to do!
Flower beds and perennials are a lot trickier in my mind. On the one hand, they look after themselves and come up year after year, which is great! However, they also tend to get out of control and take over – and it’s rarely the plants you want to dominate the bed that overwhelm all the others. Our flower beds seem to be particularly favoured by Michaelmas daises, sedge and self-seeding lupins. I have nothing against any of these plants, they are all fine plants in their own way, except for the fact that they swamp and overwhelm everything else!
I suddenly noticed that our lovely rose bush was being smothered by all the stuff around it, and so I had to take the secateurs and cut down some perfectly good lupins and daises to allow the rose to flourish. I discovered many rose blooms, but I hadn’t been able to see them through all the other greenery! As so often happens with gardening, this made me think about the similarity with my own life. It is so easy just to let bits of my life get out of control and swamp me. Sometimes these can be good things in themselves, but if they start to take over, they can prevent better things.
How many amazing things do I miss because I have allowed something average to take all the space?
It is so easy just to let bits of my life get out of control and swamp me. Sometimes these can be good things in themselves, but if they start to take over, they can prevent better things.
Jesus often used farming and gardening illustrations when he was talking. In one of his parables he spoke about how the weeds of life, worries, riches and pleasures, can smother and choke the good seedlings of God’s good life within us. It’s interesting how he had worries and pleasures both as things that can stop fruitful growth – things we see as good as well as things that we recognise are bad.
As we head into the summer, I am hoping for a little space to reflect on the good… average… not so good things that fill my time and take over my life, and maybe get a bit radical with the secateurs! Perhaps you might like to join me in this personal gardening adventure – who knows what good things God might be wanting to grow in my life and yours!
With every blessing
Rev
Jo
Levasier
jo@burphamchurch.org.uk
