"And these carrots?" -- "Have been murdered, yes."

It's amazing the deep things you can learn in the mundane chores of daily living. For example, I was weeding the garden one morning several weeks back and had loosened the soil around a bunch of the thistles and weeds. When I came back a few hours later to pull everything up I noticed that it didn't hurt to touch the thistles anymore. I was quite excited about this new way of "pain-free" weeding. But then I thought, "that's what thistles are supposed to be -- thistley and painful -- and it only took a few hours for them to cease being thistley".

It brought to life the Parable of the Sower from Matthew 13 where the farmer is sowing his seed and... "Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root" (verses 5 & 6). I had always understood what was going on in that parable, but to see the example made it hit home a lot more. I guess I had never realized how quickly plants wilt when they are no longer in soil. It took those thistles just two or three hours to completely lose their "thistleness" -- their entire purpose and reason for being. It made me think, "how quickly do I lose my focus, my sense of purpose, my "grasp" of God, when I am not working on deepening my roots in Christ? And what could my "potential" be if I took more time to focus on the things that I know are the whole purpose of life -- loving God and others, being a person of justice and mercy in this unjust and merciless society we've created for ourselves."