Weed pulling - an analagous exercise

I spent several hours pulling the first weeds of spring this week. It's not my favorite thing to do. My dad had my twin brother and I pull weeds every summer, maybe even every minute of every summer, when we were young. He had a gigantic garden behind the house next door and he'd bark in his fatherly voice, "You and Kelly get out there and weed today ..." He had shown us how to weed early on - making sure we pulled only the offending plants and not those we'd harvest to eat later on.

Last Friday I weeded our garden to get it ready for my friend Callie to roto-till. Yesterday I weeded the big berm out front of our house. Some weeds come out easily - their tiny little thread-like roots don't go very deep and they don't hold on tight when you yank them. Other weeds are more clever. Their roots are fat, finger-like and spread underground. You can't just pull them, you have to use a shovel to loosen them. I pulled all the easy ones first because ... they were easy. There is a quick, quiet satisfaction in ripping them out and dropping them in the bucket. I eyeballed the bigger offenders, saying, you'll get your turn next. And most came out with help from the shovel and a little more effort to dig deep to get all the roots. Yet some broke off, leaving snippets of roots far below the dirt to rise again.

As I worked among the new plants in the cool morning air I saw an analogy about what we believe in. If our beliefs are like the flimsy weeds it's easy to lose our stance on anything. We are easily dislodged from our beliefs and it's hard to take root again. If we are more like the stubborn weeds, hanging on tight where we are planted, it's pretty hard to let go of our beliefs - it takes a lot more effort to move us and even if we lose some ground, we hopefully have some snippets left in place for our testimony to rise again.

I don't like the thought of being like a pesky weed. The better analogy is to be like those plants that are wanted - the delicious vegetables and beautiful flowers that are welcomed and loved. Yet even those have differing degrees of sturdiness in roots. It's all about conviction. Are we grounded enough in our beliefs to stand strong and immovable, no matter what? Or are our roots weak and thin? Only the master gardener knows.