Planting and Uprooting

"There is a time for everything...a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot..." (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2).

I don't love gardening. I garden, most years (on years we don't move), but I don't love it. I don't even really enjoy it. What I enjoy is the "fruit" of my labors, the produce that comes out of the garden, fresh for the eating, at the end of the season. I don't mind planting, though getting the garden ready is a lot of work. And I absolutely hate weeding and keeping the garden going.

I think that's why I do most of my "gardening" at the produce counter at Kroger.

But I digress...

I garden because of what it produces. Green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers (I love fresh cucumbers from the garden), even pumpkins and corn. But if I'm going to be able to enjoy those things, I have to know the right time to take certain actions. A time to plant: May, in Indiana. Usually by Mother's Day, unless it's unseasonably cold or wet. Make sure the seeds and/or plants are in the ground and adequately fertilized and watered. And a time to harvest: that's something that is learned over the years. You "know" when a crop is ready to be picked, taken in. You learn it though experience and you sense it through intuition. At the end of the season, the plant is ripe and it's time to pick and harvest.

But what about this time to "uproot" that the Teacher talks about? It seems strange to think about uprooting plants that you lovingly put in the ground, though sometimes that is necessary. One year, we just didn't have the rain and I had not been home at the right times of the year to water, so the plants withered. When they were dead, I pulled them out of the ground and "recycled" them. That was a time to uproot. The other time you need to uproot is at the end of the season, when the crops have been brought in, and the plants have produced all they are going to produce. Getting the garden ready for winter requires uprooting.

But there is also uprooting that has to happen throughout the growing season. Not uprooting of plants, necessarily, but uprooting of weeds. There is a time when the weeds just need to be pulled because, left by themselves, the weeds will take over. Of course, "weeds" in horticulture is a subjective term. I had an old farmer once tell me that a weed is simply a plant growing in the wrong place. A stalk of corn, he said, in the field is a plant. A stalk of corn in his wife's yard is a weed. It's all a matter of perspective.

There is a time to plant and a time to uproot...not only in the garden but more importantly in our lives. There are things that we need to plant in our lives: practices we choose to put in place like prayer, Scripture study, time spent with Jesus, worship and fellowship. We plant those in our lives; there is a time to plant. We water them (by taking part in those practices) and allow them to grow ever larger in our lives. But as we grow, there will also be weeds that show up. Habits and hang-ups that threaten to choke out the time we have set aside for spiritual growth. And some of them are good things. Some of them are neutral things. Activities and hobbies that end up taking an inordinate amount of time or attention. As hard as it is, sometimes those things need to be plucked up, pulled out of our lives and thrown away. Whatever stands in the way of your growth in the Lord is a weed. And there is a time to uproot.

A time for everything. A time to plant, and a time to uproot. What time is it in your life?