Good Soil

"...Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks." Luke 6:45 NKJV

I have recently been meditating on this word; pun intended. The Lord has brought to my attention that the fruits of my mouth have not been very good. I tend to speak "choice" words in the midst of anger, frustration, and when I am having a moment of strong feelings about something. While I am aware of these words, I find it easier to hold my tongue around certain people or in professional situations. If I can control what comes out of my mouth at those times, why can't I just decide that I don't want to speak like this all the time? Well, it's just as Luke describes: "Good people bring good things out of the good they stored in their hearts. But evil people bring evil things out of the evil they stored in their hearts. People speak the things that are in their hearts." (New Century Version Bible) Now I'm asking myself, does this mean I am an evil person? I do not have intentions of keeping evil things in my heart, so why are they there? Jesus often spoke in parables to help people understand His message, I will explain this in a parable that Jesus has recently shared with me during one of my chores.

I have a huge lavender bush in a corner of my yard and around it are a few irises that come up every year. In the midst of all of this is a lot of blank space. I was pulling weeds here in this spot of my yard because I want to plant some wildflower seeds to fill in the rest of the area. If you are familiar with the vegetation here in Central Oregon, you will understand what I mean when I talk about our "goat heads on steroids" or commonly referred to as a Bur Buttercup weed. Sounds kind of cute, huh? NO! These things are terrible! (pic to the left for reference) You cannot just put your gloves on and start yanking weeds out by the handful, because these things will bite you back. You have to meticulously find the root of these devilish clusters and pull them out with your finger pinch grip. Luckily, they do come out easily, but you have to find the right spot to pull from. Of course, there were many other weeds all around this area so I had my work cut out for me. It took quite a while, but with each one I was reminded of how much work it is to create a soil that is clean, pure, and ready to bring forth the life of my beautiful wildflowers.

This is when God started showing me that the soil in my garden bed is like that of my heart. Sure, good things can grow; my lavender plant is big, healthy, and smells divine! This is like my heart, overall, it is seen as kind and gentle. I am a good mother and treat my husband with respect and honor. I am rich in prayer and read my Bible regularly. But in order to plant new wildflower seeds I had to get all the nasty weeds out to keep them from spreading and overtaking the new seeds I wanted to plant. I had to be careful to pull out all the bad ones and get them right from the root. As I kept cleaning the area I noticed how these Bur Buttercup weeds were sneaky. Their colors would change from light to dark, making them hard to notice. On occasion, I would pull a clump of cheat grass (a whole other level of ugh! in any yard) and I would get pricked by these things even through my gloves! This is how the bad words can come spewing out of my mouth without realizing that their evils roots were even there. Hidden by the not so bad feelings of self-guilt that moms so often carry accompanied by the moments of overwhelm that can easily turn into feelings of frustration. These are the roots of evil that I hold within my heart. It's not admittedly evil unless we realize that all these things are a lie. This is not what God thinks of us! When we believe the lies of the enemy we give him a foothold to plant roots of evil thoughts in our hearts. Other weeds, like curse words, lust, jealousy, and more will bury their roots under the guise of those that appear as a "lesser" evil so as to stay hidden from the surface. Ugh, I was about in tears because God was showing me a tangible way for me to clean out the garden soil of my heart to prepare for something beautiful that He wants to plant here!

To summarize, no, I am not an evil person just like my soil in the garden area is not bad soil. I just have to take some time to work out the weeds and feed the soil some better nutrients (prayer and scripture), I have to keep it well-groomed and watered once I have planted my seeds (fellow believers can help encourage me). I have a journey ahead because it might take longer than one afternoon to clean up my heart's soil. I know that just like with the burs and other weeds, I might have moments of pain while going through this process, but it will be so worth it when I have a garden full of wildflowers where the bees and butterflies want to come gather sweet nectar and will be able pollinate other plants and flowers. That is the idea, right? That we can encourage the life within others, that we can cross pollinate their truths with ours to affirm the glorious creation of God. That we can be a sweet smell to our Father in heaven when we bloom with integrity, from a heart full of good soil that produces good things and good words.

Bur Buttercup