And the sin that so easily entangles...

Saturday my hubby and I worked in the yard - again. It has been a big summer for yard work. Last year we had our son and his family staying with us so we spent our time with our adorable granddaughter and didn't do a bit of yard work. That made it all the harder to do this year. Deferred maintenance means a lot more maintenance. While T mowed the lawn and all, I decided to prune some shrubs. One that really needed it was the quince. I tried to prune it but I just couldn't get the job done. T pruned it well... with the chain saw! Yep, we took it down. A quince does not appear to have a single trunk. From the ground springs up dozens and dozens of twisted branches that make quite a pretty shrub if it is kept in check. Ours wasn't. The individual branches were so entangled that we couldn't even separate them when it was time to haul them off! T had to use the chain saw again and cut them in half. Honestly, as we tried to pull them apart from each other, those words from scripture came to my mind. Hebrews 12 begins by telling us to get rid of everything that keeps us from completing our race successfully. It specifically refers to sin as that which entangles the runner. That's what sin does; it twists around us, tripping us up, causing us to fall. If I had only pruned that quince earlier, it would have been manageable. As it was, all twisted and tangled, it had to be cut down. Now I'm guessing that it will come back. I'm not sure I want it back but if I don't, I need to dig out the root. Again - great metaphor. It's not enough to deal with the surface symptoms, we have to get to the foundation of the issue and remove that which causes us to be defeated in our race. So don't put it off. Deferred maintenance in our spiritual lives leads to a lot of corrective work. Prune early, thoroughly, and let the Lord dig out that root of sin. It's much easier and a lot more fun to maintain a clean landscape than to revive one that has been neglected.