An Immaculate Landscaped Life

Those who work their land will have abundant food,
but those who chase fantasies will have their fill of poverty.
Proverbs 28:19 NIV

When I moved into my grandmother’s house after her passing, one of the things that I knew would be a daunting task was keeping the yard as beautiful as she kept it. In an effort to maintain the yard she worked so hard to make beautiful, I hired a yard man.

Well, it didn’t take long for me to notice that all the yard man focused on was cutting the grass; not maintaining the shrubs, pulling weeds out of the flower bed, or any other things that helped create the aesthetics of a beautiful yard. In response to this new information, I knew I had to do something different.

Week after week I began saying to myself, “Self, you need to get out in the yard and begin pulling those weeds, cutting the shrubs back, and if nothing else water the yard.” Well, as fate would have it, this conversation with myself went on and on.

Weeks became months, and months became years and before I knew it, my granny’s once immaculately landscaped yard on the corner had become the eyesore of Cloverland.

It wasn’t until my aunt came by the house one day, fed up with the house she grew up in looking a hot mess, to talk to me about the same thing that I had been talking to myself about. She presented me with a proposal: she would help me restore the yard if I promised to do what it took to maintain its restoration.

I agreed, and we started the restoration process.

One day, while we were working in the yard a guy walked past and said he used to love looking at the yard as he passed by on his normal walk home from work and was glad that we were getting it back right.

We all want a beautifully landscaped life, a life that will be pleasant to all that pass by, but oftentimes we aren’t willing to work in our own yard. This proverbial verse screams that the reward is in the work. It wasn’t until I started working that I received the reward of public approval, validating that my yard was once again beautiful.

Something I once dreaded doing, I now do with gladness! I used to leave paper in the yard for the yard man to pick up, but now I realize that to achieve an immaculate yard, I’ve got to pick up the trash myself and discard it.

If you want an immaculately landscaped life, you’re going to have to pick up your own trash and discard it. Only you can get rid of those things that don’t bring glory to God. Can’t nobody do it but YOU!!!

#AmenGoesThere

Found out more about Pastor Pervis J. Hall here.