Living To Point To God - Abigail Lai

Weeding out my thoughts, “What are you saying, little weed?”

The last week of STEP started with a trip to Onesimus Gardens where I was rather looking forward to being down-to-earth. We walked along a clayey path and got our shoes very dirty, and when we got to the tent we were asked to help un-weed the soil for the next batch of vegetables/ crops.

The few hours yielded much more than I expected it to. When I started digging, I started with the smaller weeds. Didn’t take photos, unfortunately, but these weeds were so small they were almost unnoticeable. Yet it was important to uproot them all for any weed will prevent the vegetable from growing at its best. Just as in our lives, we often overlook the smaller weeds - the smaller distractions, the smaller sins. Do we let them go unnoticed? Will they eventually grow deeper and larger until we have to dig deeper to remove them?

Then there were the larger weeds. These were stubborn and took a lot of skill to remove. We resourcefully used the spade, hoe (I don’t know how to spell the chunko?), and dug deep with our bare, gloveless hands and pulled out these large weeds one by one. It may sound a little hard to understand, but when I pulled out one of these larger weeds, felt the roots detach from the clayey soil and saw the whole weed dangling in my dirty hands, I felt a great sense of satisfaction. And I thought - this is how it feels when we let God dig deep into us and remove the idols and things we cling on desperately to. Freedom from sin is a wonderful feeling. 

Sometimes I used the spade/ hoe and in my attempt to loosen the soil (it was really like clay because it rained the night before and it was like trying to cut through thick glue) I inadvertently chopped off the weed leaves from its roots. The blade just made a clean cut across the stem so that while on the surface I could no longer see any weed, I knew somewhere below that clay there were roots that weren’t dealt with. The farmers repeatedly told us to remove the roots and not just pluck out the leaves or the weeds will just grow again. And that’s sometimes just like us, isn’t it? On the surface, we present a clean, fine life. We dare not admit a lot of the secret sins we’ve committed, and commit daily. We avoid showing our lives are not as in shape as we like and show it to be. But if we do not dig up these roots, the weeds will grow. They will thrive and survive until we uncover all these things within us and let God do what He wants with them. 

I think a life that truly is given to God is lived in such a way that people look at us and realise they need God too. Perfection won’t quite do the trick, our struggles and persistent walk may fare better.

Abigail Lai