My husband & I were out for a drive the other day when we noticed a lady sitting on her lawn, pulling out weeds & burrs. She was in deep concentration giving it her total attention & we commented to each other, ” those pesky weeds” lol!

The thought flashed through my mind that our spiritual walk often needs such consideration. So I thought we would reflect upon this today.

Before we do let’s grab our cuppa’s, a treat & get comfy. I had some goodies given to me over the weekend so today I’m having a gf Caramel slice with a mug of Melbourne Breakfast tea blend.

Now we’re comfy let’s begin…

Our Garden

We have a beautiful garden one that my husband, Steve, tends to constantly & always keeps it well trimmed & healthy. He’s normally the one who weeds the garden beds, although I’ve been known to help on occasion but he finds weeding meditative with the Lord, so I leave it to him.

In another time…

When I lived out on the farm with my late husband Ed, each winter season we would have to go out into the paddocks & weed out Bathurst Burrs that were sprouting. Because if we allowed them to mature they would not only get into the fleeces of our sheep & come shearing time be a nightmare to handle the shorn fleeces but go to seed & increase the following year.

These particular burrs are very nasty indeed (pictured below), they have very sharp thorns that not only embed themselves into the fleece but can make their way down into the skin of the sheep piercing it & causing all manner of problems including attracting Flystrike.

It was always freezing cold out in the paddocks at that time of the year with a relentless east wind blowing in from the east coast. But we had to weed those burrs out because they really were troublesome & at that time Herbicides didn’t seem to do a thing to them.

Bathurst Burr Blindness

We had 800 acres of land, so you can imagine the size of the job that we were up against. We would spend days in one paddock only to come back the next day or so & see that we had missed many that had been right in front of us!

This was known as Bathurst Burr blindness, even my late husband Ed who had been a farmer for well over fifty years said it’s a phenomena that always amazed him, for he too would miss some, although not as many as I!

This had me thinking about the spiritual weeds that can sprout in our lives & whether we’re quick to weed them out when they first appear or do we allow them to mature…

Weeds like; unforgiveness, jealousy, gossip, vanity, unkindness, impatience, pride or hanging onto the past to the detriment of the present, just to name a few.

And I wonder how many of us become spiritually blind to some of those weeds above that are right in front of us.

Jesus told the following parable concerning spiritual growth likening it to sowing seed, its very applicable today;

“A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it.

 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow.  But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.

Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 

Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

Matthew 13 : 3-9 NIV

You see my friend if we don’t address those weeds as they appear, they’ll mature into thorny issues that will ultimately choke the life out of us not only spiritually but emotionally & mentally as well!

I address this in the following post;

Are you over Confident?

So may we ask the Holy Spirit, through prayer, to open our eyes & ears to what spiritual weeds need weeding out in our walk with Him!

Until next time,

Jennifer

You’re most welcome to join me in The Reading Nook

Or 

In Prayer

© 2025 Jennifer M. Ross, All Rights Reserved. Photo by weedscan.org.au

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