Isn't That Just Like Sin?

Over the past few weeks, we've been cleaning up a long-neglected portion of our back yard. It's Sharon's idea. If it was left up to me, we'd probably leave it alone and not look too closely. But this particular corner had become seriously overgrown and in need of our attention. We didn't mean for it to get that way. We just haven't paid much attention to it. The times we have noticed it over the past few years it's either been too hot, or too cold, or we've just been too busy (or maybe too lazy) to deal with it. So with the beginning of Spring, we've trimmed and chopped and pruned and cut, and created piles of limbs and brush to be hauled away.

The hardest part of this ongoing endeavor has been dealing with a weed. I think it's just one weed, but its not just any weed. This thing is like the Godzilla of the weed world. It is a vine that has grown up among the plants and trees and has completely entangled itself in everything. We yanked and pulled and cut out enough of this stuff to fill a dump truck. It had climbed up so high in the surrounding trees that I had to climb on top of our garden shed and cut away the surrounding tree limbs to get it down. I've noticed it's nearly killed one of the large trees it had wrapped itseld up into.

As I was cutting away at it trying to get it down out of the trees the other day, Sharon made a great observation. She said, "That's just like sin."
She's right. And I haven't been able to quit thinking about it. It is just like sin.
It's like sin in the way that it entangles itself in everything else around it. It's like sin in the way it chokes the life out of everything it gets close to. It's ugly like sin. It's like sin in the way it grows and grows, taking over more and more. And it's like sin in the way it got there, too. Through neglect. Laziness. We just didn't want to deal with it and found all kinds of excuses not to.

I keep thinking that it wouldn't be such a big problem to deal with if I hadn't neglected that area for so long. If I would have simply caught it when it first began to grow I could have gotten rid of it before it caused any damage. Why didn't I do something about it when we first noticed it rather than making excuses and procrastinating? A little work on my part a few years ago would have saved us a lot of back-breaking labor and aggravation later on.
I can tell you this: It won't happen again. I've learned my lesson. From now on I'll be ready with the weed killer. At the first sign of that stuff beginning to grow I'll be there to chop and hack and dig until I'm sure I've killed it.
That's my plan for the back yard. It's my plan for those little sprouts of sin in my life, too.

"... let us also lay aside every encumberance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our fiath, ...
~ Hebrews 12:1