A garden is a lovely picture of faith and works. The gardener pulls on the gloves and tugs the weeds, creates the spaces, designs and builds the decks and the walls. The gardener chooses and plants the plants and feeds and waters. But life and fruitfulness come from the Lord. As the gardener works, the mind dreams and hopes and anticipates the vege harvest. But without the days of sun and rain and the worms turning and munching beneath the earth, little will come of these dreams. Then, on a warm and scented day, the gardener goes out and sees the trees bursting with new buds and flowers promising to unfold in the light of the day. Birds visit and enjoy and are enjoyed as living works of art. Creation never ceasing, repeats its joy at the turning seasons. And the gardener feasts the eye upon the miracle. The fruit of work is met by the fulfilled promise of faith. Work as if tomorrow will be a riot of miraculous change. Prayer is our work sometimes. When life is just too difficult. When sometimes it is hard to motivate to rise from bed and start into another day. Prayer can be an effort. But it is an effort of no less benefit than weeding and planting. We weed the earthly thoughts that tempt us to go under and join the worms of self-pity or doom! We plant praise and thankfulness and hope by acknowledging God and his miracle power. And we are never disappointed. God's life is working despite our despair, fear or even lack of trust. His morning of joy comes after a night of tears.

A welcome garden

I want my garden to be welcoming. I enjoy it. I am sure God enjoys it because I meet with him there regularly. The birds enjoy it, the possums, my dogs, my cat and the neighbour's cat when she can get to hide in the limelight bushes to stalk the birds feeding on the grass. A zillion bugs enjoy it. Nothing is static in a live garden. Even in winter, worms are munching under ground and winter flowers like camellias, azaleas and early cheer are at their best. If I had a garden that was a digital garden made with blocks of colour, mathematically drafted, I could sit back and enjoy my creativity without the challenge of the zillion bugs or the weeds that come from everywhere and nowhere. If I had a garden where I had concreted it over and painted that green, or used artificial grass, or sculptures instead of trees, perhaps, I would have less work? But I would have less life too. I have noticed that the more life and activity there is, the more mess there can be too. And it is hard work making a garden to be that peaceful but live place. My soul is like this too. I want life. And I want to be fruitful with my life. And I want to be welcoming. And I want others to be able to meet with God because they have met me. I want God to enjoy the garden of my life. So, I have to nurture the things that make me fruitful. And wince as God prunes the bits that are dead or unfruitful. And look for weeds in my attitudes and for slugs in my behavior. Hard work. But I would rather be spiritually alive than put in some plastic Christian life that produces nothing. Glory be to God for cockatoos and correllas They make plenty of noise and eat a lot But I'd rather welcome to my garden, these fellas than have a concrete, uninviting plot!

Harlequin bugs

Some very interesting bugs entered by garden. They looked kind of pretty, and more like large lady bugs, so I figured they must be good. Assume the best in everyone! They seemed to breed quickly....

Around the same time, I noticed my passionfruit plant was looking sick along with a few other plants. I thought it was the humid spring and mildew so thought I couldn't do much about it.

Then, I discovered that these cute little bugs that I had been intrigued by were harlequin bugs and that they were culprits. Looking for a way to get rid of them I stumbled across people who called them the evil harlequin bugs from hell. It seems that they are rapid, rabid destroyers. Shame they look so pretty.

Fortunately, it says that soapy water may deal with them. I will have to give it a try.

Sometimes, we don't notice little things, like the Bible talks about, 'the little foxes', little evil harlequin foxes, that look cute. We just kind of turn a blind eye since they don't look very destructive. I sometimes think that the little sentences that are introduced into what should be sound doctrine, can seem like attractive ideas, yet later they have infested our thoughts and minds.

I guess a lot of things would come into that category. Little entertaining pictures or borderline pornography, or little snippets of gossip or ideas that just settle and seem ok. It is not as if we are feeding them. They just don't look like harmful things to start with.

Not all that is pretty is innocent and harmless. Beware the harlequin bug!

I should have looked up what a harlequin was and in Wikipedia, I found:

"The notion that the Harlequin motif grew out of France is evidenced by Hellequin, a stock character in French passion plays. Hellequin, a black-faced emissary of the devil, is said to have roamed the countryside with a group of demons chasing the damned souls of evil people to Hell. The physical appearance of Hellequin offers an explanation for the traditional colours of Harlequin's mask (red and black)."

Lucky these sinful little demons may be able to be washed away.

A good reminder to check our thinking. Anything that is a bit suss should be washed away. The hard part is eliminating all the ones hiding under every leaf or sitting too high on a tree, I guess we have to keep at it with our minds and just keep working on winning that battle.