Fathers

I think the weight of a father's presence and discipline develops a weightiness and density of soul. I missed that growing up.

Weeds and Dreams

I have a childhood memory, perhaps apocryphal, of an instance when I was helping my grandma garden. I was probably four, and had been helping my grandma weed a flowerbed when she asked me to pull out a certain weed.  Now this 'weed' seemed to me to be a perfectly good plant. I didn't want to pull it. In my opinion, it was as legitimate a plant as any of the others she had in her bed.  I let her know that I thought this plant should stay, and in the process of reasserting that it had to go she let me know that weeds were simply plants that were out of place and whose presence choked out the growth of the desired plants.  It's the gardeners prerogative to determine what stays and what goes, she maintained, and he makes these decisions based on his desire to see certain plants flourish.

This morning it occurred to me that this is an analogy for life.  Our life is a flower bed.  God is the gardener, and we are his helper.   Our activities and dreams are the plants in the flowerbed. There are some things in our lives which we hold dear that God wants to remove because they will choke out what he's trying to cultivate.  Our job as his helper is to know his desire, watch him in action, and follow his lead as we assist him in his work.

(This analogy also helps clarify who's life it is to begin with - God's, not ours).