Day 17 - Issue 24
Matthew 23:27 NLT
'What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs – beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity.'
I have become a passionate gardener. For the first time in my life, my home includes a large garden, which fills me with joy. My initial fear at the scale of the project and scepticism about my ability to manage this space has been replaced with a deep sense of pleasure in working it, including making room for an allotment.
Making room was the challenge. I needed to clear 27 Cypress trees that formed a thick hedge about one metre deep and three metres tall. So I set aside a month over which I would accomplish my plan. My trusty tree saw in hand, I literally worked my way down the hedge. Green and verdant on its edges, as I cut through towards the main trunk I was showered with dirt, dust and dried, dead needles within. Many of the limbs and some of the trunks of the 27 trees were rotten. What had appeared to be a healthy hedge included much dead and rotten wood. After each visit to the hedge I needed a shower to remove all the dust and dirt from my hair and body.
Overall there was probably more deadwood and leaves that we carried to the tip than there was good. And so I reflected upon my own life. I knew I was very able at presenting a positive image to the world in which I lived and worked, and yet reflected on how much dirt and dying debris was carried beneath my well-manicured image. I also considered how I had maintained that hedge each year and never realised just what lay beneath the many vibrant surfaces it presented to the casual onlooker. It provoked me once again to attend to the hedges surrounding my own life and ensure I was more than a “whitewashed tomb”. Graves can be well maintained and attractive, yet we must never forget they are only ever filled with lifeless remains.
QUESTION: When was the last time you gave your soul a spring-clean?
PRAYER: Lord, thank you that when you prune us and cut us back it reveals your fatherly love and care.
