Victory Garden

I went to war this morning, armed with pruning sheers and garden gloves. And courage! Pruning is not for the faint-hearted. Pruning roses even more so. They go down with a fight, thorns aimed. But as I pruned, The Lord continued a conversation He started with me earlier this morning. 

I've been in Deuteronomy, revisiting the basics. The Ten Commandments, to be exact. This morning I was at number four about working six days and taking the seventh as a holy day of rest. And The Lord began to speak, "Six days of work; not five. One day of rest; not two. A day set apart for The Lord, not as a personal vacation. For holiness, not unruliness. For cultivation, not wildness." I thought about that, and then headed out to the garden.

I started out small. A timid snip here. Another there. But the closer in I got, the more I saw just how wild everything had become. Before I knew it, I was crawling under the plants, reaching between them and climbing over them. Pruning. And getting "thorned." Pruning to open up air circulation. Pruning to bring in light. Pruning what was simply growing in the wrong direction...untrainable canes resisting the trellis. Pruning canes full of leaves and new growth, but wild and terribly misshapen...deceptive. I loped every one of them. And as I worked, The Lord continued talking to me. "The world is wild." He said, "An uncultivated wilderness."

I yanked out a twisted cane and held it up victoriously! It was mean. Wild. Covered in thorns and small, rough leaves...grotesquely shaped. I tossed it into the pile and called out, " Lord! Cultivate my life! Remove everything from it that is wild, misshapen, crowding, deceptive, growing in the wrong direction, sickly green, dying, and dead!"

"Walk in all the ways which I have commanded you, that it may be well with you," He replied. 

The world doesn't like to cut things off. Doesn't like to remove much of anything. It's unruly and grows unruly lives. It'll run roughshod. I don't want that. 

I want my life to be a victory garden.


written by: Carolyn Roehrig