This is the Day ...

This is the Day...

This is the day that the Lord has made. Why is it always easier to sing/say that on a day like today – warm sun beaming out of a mostly blue sky, soft summer breeze rustling the flowers and leaves on the trees? A grey, misty cold day presents more of a challenge in declaring breezily, ‘This is the day that the Lord has made.’

A day like today draws me outside. Some light weeding, not too much given the state of my back. Then a quick car wash, to clean away the many many signs that the swallows are nesting in the roof of the garage. I love the swallows with their midnight blue feathers, but ...

Dusty deigned to walk with me part way round our usual path, but it’s too warm when clad in such a fur coat, and the flies mushroomed round her face. She soon turned back. 

If my back were healed I would cut the grass, because the buttercups and daisies are rising above it and giving our ‘lawn’ the appearance of a meadow. They are pretty. It is a shame to cut them really, though I enjoy the sight of a trim, tidy lawn.

Jesus told a story about a farmer sowing his crop, and someone with evil intent slipped into the field in the night and sowed weeds amongst the good seeds. Jesus advised letting the crop grow to harvest time and then cutting it all and separating the weeds out then, rather than risking uprooting some of the good plants growing in the field in an attempt to root out the weeds.

In each of our lives, weeds grow amongst the good seed. Some of them are prickly and ugly and we may be able to weed them out without much trouble. Others, though, appear good. Some ‘weeds’ in our lives may even flower or produce fruit. I’m thinking of other people, friends or family, who may not follow Jesus and yet they are compassionate, helpful citizens who do many good things. Are they ‘weeds’ or are they a good crop, just late in recognising the source of all good? 

Don’t judge, unless you want to be judged yourself by the same standard which you apply in judging others. That’s something else Jesus said. There are a lot of lovely flowers in the field in which I live. I’ll let Jesus bring in the final harvest, and work on allowing his Holy Spirit to bring to maturity the fruits which he is growing in me.

Some weeds are just flowers planted in the wrong place.