Tending the Garden

August 9, 2017

Linda loves her gardens. She will spend hours weeding, pruning, dead-heading old growth. She tackles weeds with a vengeance, digs out the tiger lilies that threaten to take over, and cares for them as if they were her children. Even when she is weary and her back aches, she will be out in the blazing sun, working for the sake of beauty. 

I watch her work, and wonder, “What about the garden of my soul?” I’m afraid that sometimes it gets overrun with the weeds of laziness, distraction, and busyness. It takes hard work to dig out these weeds and to thin out the growth of flowers that may look pretty, but which threaten to take over the whole thing. A soul-garden can be a beautiful thing, but it doesn’t happen automatically. Tending the soul is hard, and continual work. If let go, the beauty and fruitfulness suffer. Linda’s work today is a reminder to me to give the same diligence to what is inside me as she does to that which surrounds her