“A righteous man is cautious in friendship, but the way of the wicked leads them astray.” Proverbs 12:26
Summertime means different things for different people. For me it means working in the yard and garden. I love being out in God’s creation and being able to observe His work in growing the plants. What I don’t like is weeds. It seems as if it’s a constant battle to keep the weeds at bay. If the desired plants are growing well, the weeds do, too. And even if the desired plants aren’t doing so good, still the weeds are usually pretty plentiful. Or at least, it seems that way. In fact, one of the ways to keep weeds to a minimum is to make sure the good stuff is healthy. Then the weeds are more likely to be choked out.
Often when I’m pulling weeds, I compare them to sin. It seems as if sin just keeps cropping up in my life. I try to grow the qualities that God desires, but it seems as if the weeds, or the sins, grow right along with them. And if I’m not working on growing and fertilizing the positive aspects, sins will quickly take over the garden of my heart. It’s a constant battle to weed out those sins. Unfortunately, I don’t know of a weed killer we can quickly spray and all the sins will just wither up and die. Rather, it takes the time and effort of pulling those sins out one by one.
I recently heard a farmer say that weeds are smart. Science comes up with a weed killer but the weeds just get smarter and learn to live with that particular chemical. Then it becomes necessary for science to invent a different chemical to kill that weed until it outsmarts that new chemical. And so, the weed battle continues. Unfortunately, our enemy is even smarter than weeds. We find a way to kill a sin, and that sin (or rather, the enemy) finds a way to outsmart that method. Then we have to come up with another method. And so, the sin battle continues.
One weed I enjoy pulling is nimblewill. It’s a type of grass that will take over an entire lawn if we allow it. At first, it looks a lot like the grass we want in the lawn so it can be kind of hard to see until it’s become almost unmanageable. That’s just like some of our sins. They may seem innocent at first. In fact, we may not even notice them until we realize that sin is taking over in our lives. I enjoy pulling it because it spreads along the top of the ground. So while I do need to pull out the roots, sometimes when I pull it, I see some nimblewill from a little ways away come out with it. I didn’t even realize they were attached to one another! It’s the same way with some of our sins. If we can pull out one sin, we may be surprised at others that we didn’t even realize were connected.
I was recently reminded of another aspect of sin. My neighbor is not able to remain diligent with the weeds in the yard. As a result, I need to be the diligent one to ensure those weeds don’t creep into my yard. That’s when I was reminded of the verse above. If we spend our time with others who choose to live a life of sin, those sins could very easily creep into our own lives without us noticing. I’m not saying we should never be around a sinner. We’d lead a pretty lonely life if we did that! Rather, what I believe this verse is saying is to be cautious of who we select as close friends. Of course, everyone is a sinner. But are we consciously emulating a person who chooses a life of blatant sin, or someone who wants to glorify God even if it means doing the hard work of “weeding” their heart? If it’s the latter, we can be a great encouragement to one another as we dig out those sins. Then our association with others can show a relatively weed-free garden of the heart, something that is a delight to behold. We will be able to reap the joy and peace of God’s love. In addition, we will be able to share that with anyone and everyone with whom we come in contact.