Yard Work

I absolutely 100% cannot stand yard work. I love to have a pretty yard but I sure don't want to invest the time to make it happen. The weeding and pulling and trimming and hedging wear me out just thinking about it. And since I cannot stand yard work I made sure to buy a house last year that has tons of bushes, shrubs and trees! Go figure?!?!?

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Anyway, we have these two unidentified bushes that are in our yard that more like vines than they are bushes. We have hacked away at these things and they just seem to never end. Shane made the statement a few weeks ago that we were just going to have to stop and let winter come and cut them down then. I'm thinking to myself these bushes are from the absolute depths of hell and will never die!! [Okay, now you see where Kristina gets her dramtic-ness from!! haha] Every day I pull into my yard and see these two "bushes" and I just wonder how they are connected together, where their roots are, do they actually die in the winter and what in the world makes these things come back year after year?

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I look back at my life over the past year and I too once was that weird crazy viney bush in my yard. I just sort of grew all over the place and instead of serving some sort of purpose I just sort of grew out of control. Occasionally a gardener would come by and snap a few of my thin viney like branches off and burn them but I never could get it together enough to grow out of one central trunk. The moment I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior something changed. My thin little viney branches sort of jumped to attention and organized themselves. They formed into a trunk like they were designed to be and then little bit by little bit God whacked away at the weeds until I finally became the bush he created! Now, don't get me wrong, there are times were a branch goes crazy and veers off and tries to do its own thing but that is where instead of trusting just any old gardener to come through and trim my hedges I only trust THE GARDNER to do it!

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"Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned." John 15:6 (NLT). Are your branches gathered into one central trunk today? Is it time for your hedges to be trimmed? Or, has your branches been chopped off and are ready to be burned? The truth of the matter is none of us go through life going and doing whatever we want...someone is always there trimming our vines...just remember...even kudzu is able to be stopped!