While Susan and I were doing a bit of weeding, cleaning and pruning in the garden on Saturday, I noticed something I thought was signifigant. We planted nasturtiums among the roses in our back yard a couple of months back and they came in beautifully. The leaves and blossoms are big robust and colorful. But as I was cutting them back I noticed that they were covered in thousands of little black bugs. I was so taken back by the infestation that I ripped them all out of our garden.
The thought that occured to me was that different insects seem to be attracted to different flowers. With our roses it's aphids, and the slugs love to decimate our marigolds. Where they come from and how they know where to go, confounds me, but it also reminded me of us humans.
The author of I and II Kings wrote, referring to the weaknesses of the kings of Israel, that we each need to know the "plagues of our own heart". What he was talking about was that we each have natural inclinations toward evil. Some of us are inclined toward anger, fear, anxiety, sexual perversion, perfectonism (that was a test to see if it bothered you that I spelled perfectionism wrong), laziness, chemical or alcohol addictions etc. They may be wired into us at birth, maybe we caught them through a family line or we may have exposed ourselves to one and it latched onto our souls (kind of like being exposed to a bad virus that attacks our body)
What we need to know is what our areas of weaknesses are so that we can protect ourselves.
I think because the same Creator made the plants as the animals and humans, there are some glaring similarities that we can learn from, so even though our nasturtiums didn't work out in the long run, I do appreciate what they have taught me.
No comments:
Post a Comment