Across the street from me, my neighbors have an amazing garden in their front yard. I see them working on it every week, filling bags with weeds and cleaning up their yard. Every week they place several full yard bags of their hard labor on the curb.
I envy my neighbor’s yard deeply. I look at my yard and wish it would be just as beautiful and lush and green and healthy. Instead I have a few scrawny bushes, dying azalias, and some hopeful rose bushes. I want to plant new flowers and make my yard flourish like theirs.
But you can’t plant new flowers if you don’t take care of the ones you already have. So today I decided to stop looking across the street. I decided to get down on the ground in the dirt and weeds, and start cleaning up my yard. I decided to take what I already have and make it grow even more fruitful. I grabbed the hose and watered each bush. I grabbed the shears and trimmed off the dead branches.
Jesus told us to seek first the kingdom, and one of the ways he told us to do that was to consider the flowers. Getting down on the ground to put up the weeds around my pathetic bushes, I saw so much kingdom. I realized that things grow when you water them.
Being a homeowner has been a beautifully fun process of seeking the kingdom right in my front yard. I’m excited to see what grows.
