Weeding Your Garden

Ever since I can remember, my family has always had a garden in our back yard. We grew corn, green beans, tomatoes, carrots, and we even had a raspberry patch. Everything tastes better when you grow it on your own. However, eating the food is not what I remember most about having a garden. The thing I remember most is having to weed it.

I remember my Mom calling us away from the TV to go and pull weeds. We had to do it like twice a week! It was painful. No matter how hot it was outside we had to help Mom in the garden. We probably werent the best weed pullers either. Regretably I would always try to make up excuses to get out of working. The Television was more important the helping my mother. I never appreciated our garden because I never enjoyed weeding. My mother would always try to explain that if we didnt weed, our garden would never yield any crop. If we dont want to put forth the work we will never recieve any food. We should therefore learn to enjoy the work so we can more fully enjoy the crop.

This is so true with life. We all want the blessings Jesus Christ promises us but we dont want to put forth the work. In a revelation given to Joseph Smith Jesus Christ taught that, "when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated."(D&C 130:21) Obedience comes first then comes blessings. However, because we all sin, we all at times fall short of being perfectly obedient. Therefore we must work to eliminate sin so we can experience the fullest measure of blessings.

Our Heavenly Father is a lot like my mother. He is always trying to call us away from our worldly pursuits to weed out the sin in our lives. We all have weeds in our garden. We have to pull those weeds if we want anything to grow. We need to listen to our Fathers counsel and get to work. If we always sit there the weeds will overrun our garden and we will miss out on the blessings promised to us. Without sincere repentance no crop would come when it is time for harvest.

A couple weeks before I came on my mission I was out helping my mom in the garden again. This time as we were pulling weeds I found satisfaction. It was therapuetic to me. We worked hard together and we could see the progress of our work as we went along. We exclaimed to one another what a blessing weeding was. It was a great time to think about life and just enjoy the work. When all was said and done we looked at the results with a smile, our garden was free from weeds.

Repentance can be an enjoyable experience as we learn the importance of it. In the end we can smile and know that our garden is free from weeds. We cant however do it alone. We need our Savior Jesus Christ. Only through him can we be free from sin and recieve the fruits of our labors which is eternal life. 

"Life is a garden, dig it"
-Joe Dirt-

Thanks mom for teaching me the importance of weeding.