EVERYDAY STEWARDSHIP -
RECOGNIZE GOD IN YOUR ORDINARY MOMENTS
Perhaps this Lent you are working hard to stick with your devotions, avoid hamburgers on Fridays, and fight your temptations for soda since you gave it up for Jesus. You are planting seeds in your spiritual life in hopes of growing them into something beautiful and meaningful. However, you have been trying this approach now for many years, and it is hard to say that much has grown during all that time. You could deduce that what you are doing is not as worthwhile as you once believed. There is no fruit because these things don't matter. Or you could take a real hard look at your life, see where you are planting those seeds, and finally notice what the problem has been all along. WEEDS!
Too often, we plant seeds over and over again in soil that is not rich in nutrients and is filled with weeds. The weeds choke the life out of any growth that comes to the seeds planted. We think that adding good things to our life will change it, and removal of sin will not be necessary. It is like eating two large hamburgers and a large fries and believing you won't gain weight because you drank a Diet Coke.
As good stewards who are called to discern how we respond to the call of Jesus Christ, we must be about ripping those weeds out of our lives so the good seeds we plant can grow. For each of us, the weeds are different: money, ego, sex, greed, etc. If we don't take a good honest look at our lives and make some tough choices, no amount of devotion or good works will make us better disciples. We will simply wait for the next Lent to do the same things all over again.