It all began innocently enough. I was walking around the Camp with a pole saw to get down some of those straggler branches – dead or low hangers. Then I noticed the bushy growth at the base of a few trees. We attacked those and got them all looking nice and clean, and as I was standing in the park, I said to Joey, “Wouldn’t it be nice to see the crick again?” Over the years the banks along the Baugo had become overgrown with brush and vines, and some of the “trees” have become rather big and you couldn’t see the water any longer. I thought we should try a test spot, so we got the saws and pruners out and did a 20′ section. It was amazing to see the difference! When I arrived this morning, Starbucks in hand, Damascene was already at work, chopping down the brush along the bank. When we saw how good it was looking, we went a little further and then a little further and now you can see the whole sweeping curve of the crick, and it is so open and clean! The jungle has been significantly hacked down, and I envision some nice benches and areas to just enjoy being by the running water enjoying the beauty of nature. The challenge will be to keep it under control next season.
Isn’t interesting how this can be applied to life? You have beautiful running stream – but because you get busy in other areas, stuff begins to grow up and before too long, you can’t even see the beauty anymore. And it’s not like it’s pretty stuff, it’s weeds, vines, poison ivy and oak, prickers and nettles. One day you step back and realize that you can’t enjoy what you once had – a beautiful view and a spacious place. Now it is a tangled mess and needs to be pruned back. I was thinking about the discussion in the scriptures where Jesus is talking about trees that don’t bear fruit and get either pruned way back or cut down. But to even take it further, if something in your life is causing you to sin, cut it out of your life. To apply this to looking through your spiritual eyes, you could say, if something is obscuring your view of beauty, it should be removed. That might be stretch I suppose, but the thought was kinda swirling around in the ole head while we were revealing more of the running water and less of the tangled mess was evident. David says in Psalm 27:4 that there’s one thing he desires of the Lord and that one thing he sought — to dwell in the house of the Lord and gaze on His beauty. So those thorns and weeds in the way… I guess you could call that sin, temptation, impure thoughts, idolatry, worldliness… I can pick out things in my life that I know are obscuring my view of Him. We started with the small stuff first – get it out of the way and get a clear view of what it was going to look like. Then it was easy to get around to start getting rid of the big stuff. They go down a little bit harder, but when I come in with something more powerful than a pair of loppers — my Stihl — I can start that baby up and saw them down in minutes.
I don’t want my view of Jesus obscured. I really don’t. I allow it to happen though again and again. I need to be more vigilant on the weed control. Because it is far to easy for the enemy to get in there and plant seeds of doubt. And it is far to easy to allow the critical spirit to operate in the realm of opinion and how I speak about others. Those weeds can quickly grow up and cause it to be more difficult to see the beauty of Jesus. But the great thing is that the Word of God is like an amazing machete – it can cut through stuff in an instant that my Stihl would struggle to power through.
One more thought though, as I sit here scratching my right arm and left leg. When cutting through the junk, it’s good to wear protection. I had shorts on the past two days since it has been 80 degrees, and so the consequences of bare arms and legs are two fold: poison ivy/oak and the effects of thorns on the skin. So sometimes, if you go in and you are not properly shod in the right gear (Eph. 6), you might come out victorious … but with some scars, scratches and even some itches.
Reality is, the Lord has given us a plan and a way to live. He wants us to experience His beauty. My hope is to stop letting the stuff the world throws at me obscure it when I allow it to take root and grow unchecked for a season or so.
Yes, good visual imagery 🙂 A great lesson to keep from entanglements and to keep up on the overgrowth in our lives so that it doesn’t overwhelm or overtake us. Good word, Wonderbox!!