What's Wrong with the Weeds?

Take a walk in the woods and look around at the wild growth. Beautiful flowers grow with stunning beauty in hundreds of shades of color. A flower no larger than my pinky has over 80 tiny pedals coming together in a sunburst center. It is no less unique in color and pattern as those flowers that man has figured out how to plant and grow in a line! If they are so beautiful, then what is wrong with weeds? They were never planted—or planned, that is true. They tend to ruin the orderly look of our lawn or garden. And, when we look at weeds, we see annoying problems instead of color and texture and beauty placed there by God. So we pull them out and throw them away!

Actually, we tend to avoid or destroy anything in our lives that we cannot explain or didn’t create ourselves. But the world is full…actually overflowing…with things we have no control over. Our lives are full of unexpected, unplanned events: we trip and fall, we discover a new hobby, we fall in love, we move away, we make a friend, we lose a loved one, we change jobs. If we must control every aspect of our lives, then we are in a constant state of unrest because life is fluid and unpredictable.

Do we treat God like a weed in our lives too? He does not present Himself where we would think most appropriate. He is not controlled. He is not. He comes in splashes of color and texture to unsuspecting hearts. He surprises us with sweet wild berries along the road just inside the tree line. Gold and white pedals spring up just after the lawn is clipped. They raise their pretty heads as if to dance before us all! He comes to us in crazy ways of unexpected yet profound beauty.

And we find that incredibly uncomfortable. We wouldn’t call God a weed, but we do seek to pull out and toss aside His unplanned, unexpected appearances into our life space. Without thinking we dismiss all that is out of order, all that is different, all that cannot easily be explained. We desperately try to return to our state of calm without even examining the uniqueness of what has come into our lives.

And we miss so much. What is wrong with weeds? What is wrong with the unorthodox and unusual? Let’s pause long enough to enjoy the beauty of the unexpected. Let’s entertain the possibility that what lies in front of me may be a gift. What has randomly landed in my path may actually be 80 tiny gold pedals coming together in a sunburst center no larger than my finger tip. If I don’t look closely, I will miss something that could change my life. Right now my life is full of weeds. And I think they are beautiful!