When we started our humble garden at the house we bought almost six years ago, I had lamented the fact that it lacked the beautiful garden we left at our old house. So, we began building some new ones. As those six years have sapped much of our energy, we sometimes wonder why we ever did so, but as you can see, the results were lovely this year. It takes time to create a garden. You want to make sure the weeds don’t get in the way and choke out the good plants. You strive to keep up with them, but sometimes they wheedle their way in, no matter how hard you try.

Our lives are like a garden sometimes. We plod along, grow, mature and get burdened and entangled by the weeds of living. The negative emotions creep in like Creeping Charlie and tug at your heart and soul. The events of the day can strangle the life out of you and turn you into nothing but a withered mess. The things within our own neighborhoods, which lead us into wondering and straying from the truth are also ways we can be tempted into a bad place. Corruption abounds in all areas of our garden of life. We can try to get rid of those weeds, but they always return to haunt us and bring us down.

We do have a perfect solution to the problem. It’s not anything we can do by ourselves. Our God has provided the right amount of the necessary elements to produce a life that is filled with beauty. He loves us with more love than we deserve. He looks at our battered condition, our weathered souls and the weeds that have overtaken us through our sin, but He doesn’t see them anymore. All He can see is Jesus and the work He completed on our behalf. I look forward to the day when I meet Him face to face – to walk through His perfect garden – to live forever, because of what God’s Son did so unselfishly for me. He died for all of us, you know. He did so as the Master Gardener of our souls.