yielded ground {why The Water just isn't enough}
I need to be weeded daily by the Spirit of God, with a Word-shaped knife so sharp it divides my soul and spirit. And this is why I cling to Him so passionately:
I really hate weeds.
Nearly every Tuesday, I make my fingers sore yanking them from the soil, digging into the dirt so that they come up by the root. What good is it to rip off the green leaves and leave a root behind, an unseen claw that will only cling tighter and introduce more ugly, choking growth? I always mumble to myself, throwing the guilty plant aside, that I should invest in one of those things my mom used when we were growing up. It looked like a long finger with a blade on the end, and I remember her stabbing it into the ground beside invading stems, triumphantly ripping weeds from the ground, root and all. My mom took out all of her aggression on the weeds, and it seems I’ve followed suit. I remember her telling me, that instrument glinting in her hand, “I’m just going to go out and dig up a few weeds.” She’d come back victorious, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.
Weeding is the classic battle between good and evil, and mothers are uniquely equipped for it. We eye the world skeptically nearly every day, looking for influences conspiring to wrap their fingers around the hearts of our children and steal away all the good we’ve tucked deep in that earth by our sweat. We know, in the deepest parts of ourselves, that no one knows our children like we do. No one else can see the subtle changes in their eyes as they wither. No one else knows, in the first instant, when a new sprout is not merely just a creative idea but the budding of a lanky enemy that will soon have roots so deep we’ll need a full-sized shovel to unearth them. So, the minute my first baby breathed her first breath, I started a unique relationship with the earth. There are some things about God that a mother comes to understand as easily as she breathes.
While I was on the coast, I hired the gorgeous daughter of one of my close friends in the neighborhood to water my planting. I had spent the hot weeks before I left clearing ground, digging and fertilizing, mulching and pruning. For me, it had been hard but happy work. I left with some concern that hundred degree days would shrivel and yellow leaves, that buds would wither, that the peony and hydrangea root balls I’d tucked tenderly into place before I left would never sprout. Planting is a risk; it’s a wonder anything survives the death of seed and the harshness of beginning. Somehow, life always overcomes. But not without water. There always must be Water. So, I hired my friend’s daughter to come every day, if necessary, and water my plants and the possibilities of plants hidden beneath the soil. She did a fantastic job.
When I came home, the first thing I noticed is that my roses stood taller, leaves looked smooth and green, buds had multiplied. I gasped to find buds on a young, tender hydrangea I’d planted just before I left. I was thrilled and thankful. But I couldn’t help but sigh about the weeds. Crabgrass poured out of one of my flower beds and reached it’s long, thin arms over the border into the grass. Milk weed had settled into the middle of my resting irises, pushing it’s strong, deep roots underneath the rhizomes. A vine, for which I have no proper name (nor really care to find one), had begun spreading it’s tiny vein-like roots below the ground behind my azaleas.
I knew when I left that I’d find weeds when I came home. I could not ask my friend’s daughter to weed also, because the truth is, no one knows the weeds in a garden better than the One who planted it. And watering only encourages the weeds, while nurturing the things planted. When I’m home, I tend the plants often and would actually walk among them every day were it not for a thousand other responsibilities that vie for my attention. I pull up weeds as they sprout, well before their roots can establish any strength. I knew that three weeks of neglect would mean at least a day of ripping and untangling. By the time I finished the work the Tuesday after we returned home, my legs and arms shook with the effort.
As I struggled against a particularly deep root, thrusting my shovel madly into the ground at it’s base, I heard God whispering to me. You know, you and I have work to do together. There’s weeding to be done in your heart.
The longer I walk with Christ, the more I yearn to truly follow and allow Him to be the life in me, the tighter I cling to the Spirit. What a gift He sent to dwell deeply within, to fertilize and prune, to weed the soil of our hearts! I can never quite wrap my mind around the idea that the same Power that raised Christ now dwells in me. For years, I ached with the disciples when Christ packed that soil around the idea that He really would be leaving them.
Now I am going to him who sent me, yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ Because I have said these things, you are filled with grief. But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you (John 16: 5-7).
It hurt me that they had to watch him go, that they would face scattering, aimless confusion and fear before they understood the beautiful, Kingdom tree that His blood had fathered. I didn’t really understand why they needed the Spirit, the Counselor, more than they needed Him there in the flesh, breathing with them. But these days, I understand. I know the ferocity of the weeds–the way they choke hope, wither love, and wrap their long, viney, blinding fingers over my eyes.
As long as Jesus walked with them in the flesh, He could water them continually with teaching. He could see the weeds growing in their hearts and point to them, turning their eyes toward them, commanding them to live beyond the boundaries of human nature. But only the Spirit can walk through the pathways of a yielded heart and cut away the weeds. And without the tending transformation of the Spirit, growth is impossible.
I love that William Young, in his amazing, widely-read book, The Shack, depicts the Spirit as “keeper of the gardens, among other things (The Shack, 87).” Young’s main character, Mack, follows the Spirit through the garden of his own heart (though he doesn’t realize it in that moment), where “she” first snips off a pungent bouquet of flowers and herbs and then hands Mack “a shovel, rake, scythe, and pair of gloves” and heads to ” a particularly overgrown path,” where they begin clearing out plants Mack would never have chosen to remove, for a purpose only the Spirit understands (The Shack, 130-131).
Absence in the garden is an endless temptation for a busy Christian like me. Every day there are reasons why I don’t have enough time to show up to walk in the garden of my heart with the Spirit for the weeding. Pretty soon, I reason that at least I am in the assembly on Sunday. At least I am listening to the sermons, participating in the Supper, singing the songs. Within weeks, I become like a garden well-watered but never weeded. No human being can weed the garden of my heart. No one knows where the weeds begin or where they’ve hidden their roots like the One who planted the blooms. It’s too much for me to entrust my soul to human hands. Christ himself warned that human beings can and will destroy the good plants with the weeds (Matthew 13:29). And in soil untended by the Spirit, weeds will grow, and eventually they will choke out the healthy plants.
In seasons, I have found such complaint in my heart. When I start to wither, a thousand reasons—the aroma of thick, prickly weeds—present as to why the problem is someone or something else. I comment that the worship is dull in the assembly. The songs are wrong. The speaker says nothing that impresses me. Other people distract me. I feel dead inside. “I’m not growing,” I hear myself say, “I’m not being fed here.” Stagnation is a miserable disease. And lately, I’ve learned to see my heart’s complaint for what it truly is—the cry of a soul overcome with weeds. I hate weeds. They choke out life and health and growth with such ugly aggression. And unless I show up in the garden with the Spirit, unless I stay still for a bit and yield my heart to the Spirit’s scrutiny and the cut of the Word-shaped knife, I will one day be as dead in my faith as I feel.
I am preparing now for the Fall, when I will dig holes in the soil and tuck bulbs there to die in the winter cold and resurrect in vibrant color in the Spring. The soil must be ready for the planting, and then there are details to consider—how wet the earth gets there, the depth to plant, fertilizing. In my mind I see what the dull dirt cannot–thousands of bright blooms—golds, pinks, reds. The Spirit always imagines me as the vision of a garden I cannot conjure myself. He prepares the soil for seed I know nothing about, blooms anticipated far into the future.
How often can the personalities of scripture actually envision becoming what the Spirit had in mind? When Moses was called, he said,
O, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.
The LORD said to him, ‘Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.’
But Moses said, ‘O Lord, please send someone else to do it (Exodus 4: 10-13).’
Gideon asked for three signs, including two different versions of wet this and dry that, before he believed that God had actually called him to defeat the Midianites.
‘But Lord,’ Gideon asked, how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.’
The LORD answered, ‘I will be with you (Judges 6:15,16)…’
The disciples were uneducated fishermen when they were called, and Paul (then Saul) watched over the coats while men stoned Stephen (Acts 7:58) and then became bent on destroying the church.
Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison (Acts 8:3).
Before Paul was ready to burst forth in full color for the Kingdom, God literally blinded him and allowed him to hear the voice of Christ. And Ananias balked when God called him to escort Saul into the Kingdom.
‘Lord,’ Ananias answered, ‘I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.’
But the Lord said to Ananias, ‘Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name (Acts 9: 13-16).’
The point is, the soil never knows what God prepares it to become until the time is right. Most of the time, the Spirit imagines something we cannot, because the Spirit knows the heart of God (John 16). This is why I really dislike those “spiritual gifts inventories” we sometimes fill out, hoping for a glimpse at our propensity for certain types of service in the Kingdom. The thing is, I never read of the people of scripture saying, “Oh, yep. I can see why you chose me for this. This job is SO me.” On the other hand, it appears that it worked for them the way it always works for me. God says, “You are going to do this for me.” And I say something like, “WHAT?! I love words. I play with them like clay. WHAT am I going to do with two children who can’t find words to speak?! And did I mention that I.am.an.introvert?”
In my life, I’ve come to see that there’s a quick easy way to figure out whether or not a calling I feel is a calling from God. If I feel adequate for it, it’s usually not from Him, because He always chooses “so that no man may boast before him (1 Corinthians 1:29).” His response, when I say I can’t, is always the same response He gave in scripture. “Nope. But I can. And I have chosen you. I will equip you. I am what you need.” It’s only after I wrap my arms so tightly around the Spirit that I’d have to be pried away that I begin to see all the ways He’s been preparing the soil for this planting—all the years of sweaty digging and clearing and pruning that happened just so this particular plant could bloom in its season.
I’ve learned that none of that tending happens—not the clearing, not the pruning, and certainly not the weeding– if I don’t show up for the Spirit’s work in the garden of my heart. Only He can see around the bend to the vibrancy of a season ahead.
So, Spirit, please, dig deep.
For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account (Hebrews 4: 12,13).
