We were sitting at the table, enjoying our evening meal. For once no one was whining, no one wanted something that wasn’t already on the table and surprise of all surprises, no one was whining about the food!

It was going so well.

Until Checkers spoke.

“Is that a big weed out there in the flower bed?”

“Where?! Oh. No, thats a flower.” Sigh of relief for Grace.

Checkers wasn’t so easily convinced. “That is definitely a weed! It’s the kind that grows all over the place here.”

I surveyed the flower bed, I knew what he meant. It did look suspiciously like those weeds that we had too many of, I was sure though that this wasn’t one of them. “No, it’s a flower, it’s that tall gangly one that gets those pretty yellow flowers. I know, it looks a bit odd there since it gets so tall, I’ve thought about moving it already but just never got it done.”

He remained unconvinced. “I think it’s a weed.”

“Then where’d that flower go?! Because if that’s a weed then someone took my flower!”

Not to mention, I had spent a lot of time in that flower bed getting Rid of weeds, so much time in fact that I considered it to be almost perfectly weed free now, so there was no way I would have skipped a big weed! Nope, it just wasn’t possible.

A couple evenings later, we were spreading mulch in my perfectly weedless flowerbed, when Checkers glanced at that weedflower and said: “Grace, that is a weed.”

I looked at it. It really did look like a weed. I walked over to inspect it a bit closer and was a bit horrified at what I found. “No Checkers, it’s definitely not A weed. It’s like two, maybe even three weeds!”

I pushed the weeds aside and there in the middle was my flower, the one that gets the pretty yellow flowers, hidden with all it’s glory and splendor by big ugly weeds. Weeds that I had defended.

I tried to pull those weeds, I pulled a little harder, then finally admitted. “Yea, it’s a weed alright, one that’s been there so long it’s gonna take a shovel or at least someone with more strength then I’ve got to remove it.”

I’ve been thinking about that weed. How often do people so clearly see weeds in my life? Weeds of sin that I am too blinded to see because I justify it in some way?

How often am I unknowingly hiding beautiful flowers by not recognizing theses weeds?

Would Jesus shine brighter through my life, if I investigated and removed those weedflowers instead of simply insisting that they aren’t weeds?

What blessings am I missing out on if I refuse to see these weeds?

And while I’m at it I will be inspecting my flowerbeds a bit closer as well…