Note the weeds.

NOTE the weeds.

They grow in the hostile cemented sand we call our "back yards" here in San Diego. The soil is rugged...dry like the desert. Hardly soil, the ground is hard as though kitted together by pressure. This rocky land seems to be fit for nothing but preserving fossils.

How do the weeds grow?

How do the weeds grow...months on end without rain? It had been San Diego's longest record of days without rain. This year's Santa Ana season seemed hotter and dryer than the years before. This year, I saw the weeds die.


In a mini forest, sitting knee-high, the yellow daisies flirted with the birds all spring. In the summer the flowers fainted while their stems weakened. By September all that was once thick and green had hallowed to a dry brown. I watched the weeds wither.

By October they were dead.

Months passed by, and then it rained.... And BEHOLD, after a couple of downpours, like lightening they sprouted up.

From the seat of my desk through my living room window... this morning I have noticed the weeds.

It had only been a couple weeks of rain, yet in those few weeks...in the marginal amount of rain that fell upon my backyard, the weeds regained their strength. Not only did they come back to life, they grew bigger and they multiplied. What had been only an occurrence in a small corner of my yard last Spring had unlawfully turned into an invasion in a year.


The weeds are making their presence known to me; with a snicker they wave to me from the cracks of my pavement and from the trunk of my hill they bid me 'good morning'...even the soil of my potted plants have become their refuge. They, like scoundrels, have suffocated the flowers that blossomed among the iceberg grass. Indiscriminately, they have stolen sun, nutrients and water from my backyard: my Giant Wild Rye shrubs-dead; my Ficus tree-without leaves; my tomatoes plants-without fruit; my rose bush-without even one petal...the weeds have left my backyard desolate.

But why, why the weeds? Why note the weeds?


Are we not yards of clay?

 Our hearts are a land no less rocky than the soil of a desert...
And our sin... no less evil and no less aggressive than the weeds whose roots latch onto the rocks of our backyards.
After months of drought the weeds suffocate, but at the clouds' discretion... just a few inches of rain brings about revival.

Letting the weeds die is not enough. The land needs tilling and the rocks on which the roots clutch to need removal. Deeply connected, the roots of one spout are anchored to another; they feed each other.

To purify a garden of such a pest would seem impossible.

But for the Believer, our Hope exists in Christ. His blood not only covers us, it cleanses us. Because of The Son’s death and resurrection, legally declared before The Lord, our hearts are without rocks and our backyards without weeds… all the while, under permission of The Father, The Holy Spirit plows away.

"I don't have to be, have or do anything, but rightly respond to The Lord."