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I spent the afternoon weeding and thinning plants in my front yard. It was good to be outside, even when it started raining, even when the air turned like a greenhouse out of doors. I haven't had dirt under my fingernails for a long while, maybe not since we left our house in Omaha more than two years ago. We don't even have the right tools, and I had to call she-who-usually-has-that-which-I-do-not to borrow a rake and a hand shovel and the skinny tool that gets between the cracks in the sidewalk to pull out weeds.

That solitary discipline of pulling out the dead and the overgrown and that which doesn't belong provides time for pondering. Back in the beginning when it all was good, and "God planted a garden in Eden, in the east," and He "made all kinds of trees grow from the ground, trees beautiful to look at and good to eat," (Genesis 2:8, MSG) did weeds exist? Surely not. Were there ant hills in unexpected places? Or maybe they just didn't bother any one? Maybe those ants didn't bite?

And those weeds in the sidewalk cracks, they are little, but oh their roots are deep. The tentacles creep under the bricks and require a firm tug to pull out without snapping and leaving parts behind. What good is it, if you pull the plant but leave the root? I think of the "weeds" in my life, and what good is it, for me to behave nicely if the same idol is yet lodged firmly in my heart...

Once finished for the afternoon, I wondered if anyone would even notice I had been there? It wasn't different, really, just cleaned up, ready for new plants, needing more work later. But it was nice, after an afternoon of labor, to whisper, "it is good."