Sometimes God gives us a quick lesson, not wasting much time to get the message through.  On the other hand, sometimes, He builds the lesson across several years or even many years.  Perhaps lessons in marriage take many years, but here is a lesson that took more than several years for me to get.  Perhaps something similar has happened to you?

So, ‘more than several’ years ago one of my best friends gave me some plants for my garden.  I was always interested in more plants and she was extremely knowledgeable about them.  In fact, she had her own gardening company.  So, I readily accepted the plants.  In my fairly large backyard, I have one area that I call the circle garden.  It has had its problems over the years, mainly because my yard sits on what used to be one of the earlier farms in our town.  I have been digging up bricks and bits of broken pottery and pig bones for years.  As a side note, when my daughters were little, they and their friends used to dig out there.  If they found a bone, they excitedly reported that they had found a dinosaur bone.  It was a small yet fun distraction for them which lasted until a neighbor told them the truth of the matter.  Anyway, parts of the yard have always been a struggle for me.  As the years passed by, those plants from my dear friend became horribly invasive.  Ayayay!  Sadly, my friend passed away a few years after giving me the plants.  I missed her dearly, so how could I be upset with her over the invasiveness of those naughty plants?  I tried just to bury the whole thing and continued to struggle with trying to remove them.

Just a few weeks ago, I bought some plants that would attract butterflies and beneficial insects to my property and decided to plant them in ‘the circle garden’.  I began to dig, and then more digging ensued, and then I just couldn’t seem to stop.  You would be shocked at everything I dug up.  Apparently, since there were no dumps in those days, everything went into one very special place in the backyard, and this turned out to be it.  Broken pottery (lots), broken glass (lots), a rusted spoon, long rusted nails, an oblong piece of rusted metal, oyster shells, more bones, big rocks and little rocks, bricks and pieces of bricks.  And of course the invasive plants and their roots, and more roots, and more roots.  It’s a plant for which you must remove every trace of a root or that tiny trace will become a new plant.  As the digging went on and on, thoughts of my dear friend were fresh in my mind, and I found myself reflecting on my friend, our friendship, and the plants.

As my digging went deeper and further around the circle, God led my thoughts to follow suit.  Deeper and wider.  In a flash of inspiration, I realized that instead of a curse of invasive plants, my friend had given me a most exquisitely beautiful treasure.  God began to show me that first, I would never have cleaned up my backyard if it had not been for those nasty plants.  All that garbage would have still been underground, but I would have been mostly unaware of it.  More importantly, at the same time, He showed me that all of those bits of trash under the surface corresponded to things inside of me that the Lord has been helping me to dredge up and eliminate over the years.  Things in my life that were not actually mine, but just as I inherited the hidden dump in my backyard when we bought the house, I inherited characteristics from my parents and grandparents and great grandparents (and they in turn inherited from their parents) that God wanted me to cast away.  Perhaps I had my grandmother’s way of being judgmental, or my grandpa’s problem with depression, my dad’s quietness, or my mom’s sharp tongue.  I love all of these dear relatives and they passed down many wonderful traits as well: ideas, behaviors and life lessons that I will always treasure.  But it’s time to dig up all those other thoughts, feelings and behaviors that have no future place in a paradise garden.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.

Matthew 13:44

What do we all have hidden under the surface, somewhere deep in the recesses of our hearts?  Those things do not truly belong to us.  We are literally children of God, descendants of Adam and Eve, the son and daughter of the living God.  Any characteristic that we have inherited that doesn’t befit a child of God is not ours, and Jesus our King has given us power to get rid of it.  As our loving Father reveals what is in our heart that is not like Him, it is as a treasure hidden in a field of earth.  Not because that thing has any value of itself, but that the finding of it and eliminating it from our lives through the power given to us by Jesus is the exquisite treasure.  Why a treasure?  Because each problem that we overcome brings us that much closer to God who loves us eternally and wants us to dwell forever with Him in His paradise.

May we all have the spiritual insight to see that when problems beset us, God is setting a treasure before us.  We just have to dig it up, eliminate it from our lives, and replace it with something positive.  The true treasure is God living inside of us.  Happy digging!  Watch His life come alive in you.  🙂

But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you.

Matthew 12:28

He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels. 

Revelation 3:5

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?

1 Corinthians 6:19