A Garden Well Tended

Wake Up Call

What a difference just one puny little week makes. Right before I left on vacation to visit my daughter I got my yard in order. I mowed, I trimmed, I weeded. I had to watch the sky like a hawk to fit my yard work in between showers. If the rain wasn’t coming down first thing in the morning the grass was still wet. Later, when the grass was dry enough another downpour started. Eventually I found a small window of time and got everything ship shape.

As I drove up my street one week and one day later my yard looked like a sad neglected and very overgrown property. How had this happened so quickly? Had someone come over and poured MiracleGro all over everything? Before the end of my first day home, there I was back at it again; mowing, trimming, and weeding.

I’m reminded of how diligent we have to be if we want to keep things under control. Not lawns and gardens but prejudiced attitudes and judgmental mindsets. How quickly they grow. We think our mind is all trimmed up nice and neat and suddenly we find it infested and overgrown with garbage. And there we are starting over again trying to weed out the destructive thoughts that somehow got away from us while we weren’t looking.

I like the way The Message (a paraphrase of the Bible), translates Philippians 4:8. It says; “Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious-the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.” Leaving your mind unattended for a week or even a day can have disastrous results. Keep your mind focused on all that is right and true and the bad will have no space or time to spring up into an unruly mess. Your thought life will be as a well tended and restful garden – a pleasure to occupy!

1 Comment

  1. Lydia Selwood

    Thank you. This is so true and so important. We cannot always control our first thought; sometimes it just pops in. But, we can choose our second and subsequent thoughts, “hold them captive and obedient to the Lord” or, run amok with them, letting them fester and wreak havoc. One ungodly, inappropriate thought can derail our whole day — if we let it. A day hemmed in with prayers is unlikely to unravel. Thank you Jesus!

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