Hot day in Alabama today! The sky is sketched blue, decorated with fluffy white clouds by Father Sky. I watered the birds and the flowers and the vegetables as sweat ran down my brow. I watched the butterflies and the honey bees enjoy drinking the water from the flowers as the morning sun dried up the silver drops. And I remembered to turn the hose pipe off today!

I picked a few tomatoes, a few cucumbers, and cut a bouquet of zinnias and sunflowers from my little garden, all suffering from a lack of rain. I think of rain as fertilizer for gardens, the nitrogen greening the leaves and yellowing the vegetable blooms, watercoloring the zinnias, brightening the sunflowers. The lawns green up and the weeds get going. Weeds love to show up and strut their stuff. They just take over and push everything out.

Weeds are defined as any plant growing where it is not wanted. We all have pesky weeds in our lives, too, unwanted things that creep into our lives and try to take our joy, choking out the happiness of our days. They start as subtle changes and if we don’t get them in check before we know it the weeds of worries and anxiety have entangled our faith. We have to weed our spiritual lives, hoeing the seeds of challenges and doubts away, planting the seeds of prayer and thanksgiving.

In Mark 4: 18-19, the Bible identifies three weeds that thrive in our lives — the worries of life, the desire for material things, and the deceitfulness of extra money. Worrying over things we can’t change distract us from living life. Put these worries in God’s hands through prayers and he will give you peace. The desire for material things sometimes changes the direction of our life’s path and takes away the importance of faith in our lives. Money can’t buy happiness. If it could it would be short lived and shallow. We find our wealth in God’s love.

Our lives will be fruitful and bloom if we take care of the invasive weeds through our reading of God’s word and our daily prayers. God is a great weed killer.

“To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.” Rudyard Kipling