|
The garden in our yard is filled with thousands of stones. Every spring I plow it up and rake through the soil trying to get rid of all the stones, but as soon as it rains more stones appear. It is a never- ending cycle. It began decades before we bought the house. Some contractor with a truckload of stones to get rid of decided to use them as fill in the backyard when the house was being built. The stones were dumped in and then covered over with dirt so they wouldn't show. But in spite of all the dirt piled on top, the stones soon began working their way up to the surface. No matter how well you think you do it, no one can hide stones for long in good ground. Eventually, everything hidden comes into view. So here I find myself years later realizing that the only way to claim the garden's goodness is to pick out the stones that keep coming up. Whenever I think I'm getting ahead, it will rain and new stones appear. It's like the rest of life. Who knows what mindless, demonic, force dumped all the hard stones into the good soil of life. It doesn't matter much how they got there. What matters is what you do with them when t hey show up in your garden. They don't simply go away and covering them up doesn't work. Stones have to be recognized and removed by human hands, one by one. Jesus came to join us in our struggle to remove the stones from the garden. I've taken buckets full of stones out of my garden and still more appear. Yet I'm hopeful that some day, if I last long enough, the soil will be completely life giving and stone free. That's the hope I find in Christ as I struggle to claim the good in the rest of life. There are Greater Hands from heaven dug deep into the soil of our lives, and by God's grace we can trust that someday we will find ourselves more deeply rooted into the experience of God's love than we could ever imagine. --H.S. |