Self-healing Grass

We have this...stuff...in our yard. They call it self-healing grass. As we are renters, you can imagine the multitude of previous renters that have each felt bad about the pathetic yard at our house, the patchy grass, the overgrown bushes that don't look like they have thorns but secretly bear two-inch spikes.... Each new renter, hacking at the plants that have become weeds, ripping out the ones that have converted to long-dead twiggotry...and invariably planting a new variety of grass to fill in the patches caused by the combination of 110 degree summers and an exhausted sprinkler system. 

One year, someone got sick of the constant drudgery and had the FANTASTIC idea to plant self-healing grass and hoped it would never be an issue again. HA HA ha ha. Boy did they soooo have the last laugh. For those of you who haven't had the joy of using this ingenious little plant...it's a NUISANCE!! Don't ever, ever buy it. For those of you who have had the pleasure, 'nuff said. You know of what I speak. It doesn't have an inkling where the grass is supposed to end and the flowerbed or driveway begins. It's aim is to conquer all. It grows like a thin, very low-lying vine, and every few inches places roots - the pulling of which is comparable to removing nails from wood with your fingertips. It grows everywhere. (I'm not trying to complain. I've added my own new variety of bushy fat-bladed green grass that is nice and thick and NOT self-healing. It almost seems to drown out the half of the yard that is clover. ) 

Without action, we too tend to grow in any direction we please. If left to ourselves, we can grow well outside the boundaries that God has planned for us. There are several resources available to us as Christians to help us mind our boundaries, such as these examples:

* The Word of God is a wonderful, absolute marker of bounds we should live our lives inside.

* Time spent talking with and hearing from God is an essential element of our direction.

* The local church provides excellent opportunities of growth that are within God's will.

* Not only does God lead us through the preacher and his preaching, it is a place to establish friendships that will support us and help us grow more like Christ.

When we disregard our boundaries we put down roots every so often in places that we shouldn't, and the effort that we should be spending filling the holes in God's garden where we are needed is wasted outside His will. When the Gardener comes and finds us He redirects us, as it were. Most of the time it hurts! The more set we become, the more roots we place, the more it hurts when He tears up the parts of our lives that are out of His will.

James 1:13-17 says, "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Do not err, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."

Wow! How can we know if the hardships that come to us are an attack by Satan, chastisement from God, or His leading us to go elsewhere?

We need to look at where we are growing and planting our roots. Are we minding the boundaries so clearly set before us or are we snaking tendrils of interest into the world around us? If we're out-of-bounds, we've brought the hardship on ourselves! These verses clearly indicate that sin is something we do fine all by ourselves. The pain we feel comes as a result of where we are - both as a natural consequence and from God's chastisement if we are His child.

If we examine ourselves and find that we are still in the yard where we should be and are minding our boundary markers, it may be that Satan is seeking to drive us out of God's will. However, I don't believe that God would allow hardship in our lives to cause us to transplant to another area of the yard. Trials come from God if we are outside His will and from Satan if we are in God's will. If we are growing on the edge of the yard trying to keep a foot in both worlds, it may be possible to feel hardship from both sides, and we'd need to plant ourselves squarely in God's will.

The last verse though is a reminder of what we read in many other places of the Bible - God IS good. If we are in His will and it's time to move, He will make the way open - not by inducing pain to drive us one way or the other, but by showing His goodness in the way we should go. You could say He would fertilize the ground where we should be.

May we be like self-healing grass that grows and spreads out as fully as possible within the boundaries of God's will.