Shadows

 

I’m trying to enhance our veggie-growing potential. Don helped clear the greenhouse of furniture so I could get in, put a couple of grow-bags on the ground and when the time is right, I’ll put in some more tender plants.

The greenhouse is not ideal. It is shaded by a lilac tree, too high for me to trim. Some of the glass panes are broken due to strong winds, so several years ago Don put corrugated plastic on the outside of the glass. Last year, I failed to notice the ivy creeping up the back wall, insinuating itself between glass and corrugated plastic roof. The effect is to shade the greenhouse even more.

So I spent time cutting back the ivy, but of course, the fingers stretching into the roof area are brittle and dry, and as gentle as I was, I failed to pull it all out. I guess it will remain there until it decays into dust, unhelpfully shading whatever I try to grow.

Bad attitudes, twisted thought patterns, negative ideas and doubts can insinuate themselves into my mind and affect my words and actions. It is very easy not to notice, until the Holy Spirit (or a helpful friend) points out that these patterns are shading my spirit and stunting my growth, reducing my fruitfulness. Trying to remove the offending ideas by myself can result in partial success, but leave behind detritus which continues to hamper my growth.

The only solution is to bring it to God, and ask Him to renew my mind and thinking. Without God I can do nothing. The writer to the Romans encouraged them to be transformed by the renewing of their minds.

Lord, renew my mind today, I pray. Where tendrils of criticism and fingers of doubt have wheedled their way into my thoughts, completely eradicate them, I pray, and open me up to the warmth of the Son.