An unkept garden

    Have you ever seen a neighbor's yard go unkept? I'm sure you have, perhaps YOU were the one who let your lawn go a few too many days without a mowing. Regardless, this post isn't about ridiculing your lack of mowing desire, I am certainly right with you on that issue. But rather, let's use the unkept lawn, or garden, or whatever space is needing some tidy-up as a parable for the world God allowed us to be servants of. And no, this won't been an environmental message either though you could certainly apply the parable to such a context.

     My mother-in-law has always liked to keep a tidy and beautiful flower garden. She digs landscaping (pun intended) and really finds enjoyment in that hobby.  But then she had to fight some battles with cancer. The battles eventually drained her of the ability to maintain her gardens and landscaping, such that they became totally  saturated and overtaken with weeds. In analyzing the scenario, I supposed that the task of separating the weeds from the desirables would be very difficult and laborious, almost to the point of giving up and scraping the whole space clean to start anew.  
Anyone that spends even 5 seconds of honest thought and consideration about the world around him or her will surely agree that 'the world is a messed up place.' Spend a few minutes or hours of thought on this and you'll reckon there is much about the world that needs 'cleaned up.'  The immorality and irresponsibility regarding sexual matters for example, talk about a mess!!  Those issues pop up in TV; Advertising; Film; Music; Literature; Scandals of our voted in 'role models;' the web; social networking; and on and on. The issues are seen in weeds like undesired teen sexuality and the ramifications of such; amazingly poor and illogical legislation relating to sexual offenses; breakdown of the traditional family structures; continued high divorce rates and so forth. And this is just in ONE umbrella area of the human nature given to less than desirable choices!
When you attempt to start cleaning up any one of the symptoms or manifestations of it, the labor you put in often doesn't seem to give a good return. In fact, you may feel like there isn't a way to even make a dent in the problems at all.
Wiping the space clean and starting over may not be possible (depending on how you interpret that). But in one sense of it, maybe we need to mentally wipe our space clean and get back to the roots of purity, and of honorable things. The Bible certainly supports such an idea. The Bible even states one must be "born again," so to speak, thus making yourself wholly different. Seems like this is what needs to happen on a broader scale in order to see some of the rampant issues that we are now seeing get at all resolved.

But that resolve has to start somewhere, that resolve can start with you.