It’s a hot summer weekend, bordering the Fourth of July.  It’s the kind of weekend that is normally full of invites and picnics, beaches and fun.  But it’s also one of the few weekends that I didn’t have anything on the schedule.  The rest of the family was booked solid though!  The minute this weekend is over, our calendar is on hyper-speed.  We have one thing after another and I won’t be able to see straight until early October.  Yes, it’s that kind of summer.  The kind that you feel racing ahead at a time of year that you really want to slow down and enjoy, especially in Michigan where the great weather is short-lived.

The big kids were off to various places, a car had to get in to the dealer, drop-offs had to be made for teens and I needed to drop in for a visit with my parents.  By 2:30 pm the littlest two and I were finally home with no where to go.  They jumped in the pool and I started a project I’ve been hoping to tackle for a couple years.

Both of our walkways, front and backyard, are made of interlocking pavers.  In between all those pavers are copious quantities of small weeds and grass.  For the past two years, a few times a year, I’ve picked all the weeds out and hated every minute of it.  I have wanted to do a clean sweep, but just never got around to it.  Time would be short and I’d pick the weeds, knowing that if I did the whole job I wouldn’t have to weed as much.  So yesterday, when the world was busy around me, I determined it would be the day.  It meant I had to take the new power washer and put gas in it, and attach the hoses, something I normally rely on my husband for.  But he ran up north to cut the grass at his parents cabin.  I got the job done and started power washing out all the weeds and dirt and gravel between the joints.  In no time, I was covered head to toe in mud and fine gravel.  It was in my ears and hair, my bathing suit, my legs and my face.  The crunch between my teeth was a tell-tale sign I must have had my mouth open during the project.

As I waved the wand with water that flowed out at such a rate it cut like a knife, I noticed something between the flying mud and water.  Some weeds were immediately blown out of the cracks.  Others, like mossy areas, were a little harder to come up.  However, when you caught the edge of them, they came out in large chunks.  Deep dandelions, well no getting around it, they would be loosed, but I would need to pull them in the end.   But there was something that caught my eye in the process.  Some of the finest weeds didn’t budge.  I could go back and forth, over and over, and they did not come out.  They would bend and change direction, I could blat them sideways, frontwards and back, and dead on, and still they would not come out.  The same was true for areas that had filled in with grass.  Thin, tiny blades of grass were some of the hardest to remove.  Even in the tiniest of places to grow, their roots secured them.  Even under the greatest force, they remained.  The powerful force of the water that can even slice through my skin, could not automatically uproot grass or tiny weeds.

It was a quick reminder to me of just how rooted I need to be.  I may not be able to cover alot of ground, but my ground needs to be able to withstand frustrations, troubles, rejections and attacks by forces greater than myself.  Someone once asked me, “have you ever questioned your faith?”  I can tell you, the answer is no.  I’ve never questioned it.  There have been alot of rough spots in my life that I have been absolutely at the mercy of.  But it never made me doubt my faith.  And my faith has kept truth in sight at all times.

My daughter and I were driving to the chiropractor and we commented just this week how amazing it is to know so many who were raised with the truth and knowledge of God and His word, but who have justified new philophies and compromises.  People who we thought were rooted but who have become separated from the ground beneath their feet and embraced what the world has proclaimed to be true.

“Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ…” Colossians 2:6-8

Rooted…not just full of faith.  Deeply rooted, instructed, established, and overflowing with gratitude.  Nobody, or no theory or feeling, should be able to move us from the grounding of our faith.  It has to go deep, and to go deep, it needs to actually be deep. Immovable!  Unshakeable!  I may be tiny, but my faith is strong, and my determination is to go deeper as the power that tries to shake me loose looms.  Go deep!  Work at it, be  instructed, be established, be filled with gratitude!  And hang on!  Life is pretty rough.  But God already knew that….. 🙂

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