When I was a little girl my paternal grandfather was my hero. I didn’t think there was anything he couldn’t grow or build. His wisdom came from a life lived during the hardest of times and good times too.

His gardens were enormous. He sold produce in Charlotte to the large grocery stores. When he would load his truck with baskets of squash, tomatoes, cantaloupes, beans, watermelon…I’d just marvel. How did he know what to do? Where did he learn to grow such beauties?

When my Dad would garden, he would pass along to us the things my Pappy had taught him. Things like, “ Plant your peas on the full moon in May.” “Don’t plant okra until you can sleep without a cover.” And the one I want to talk about today…”If dirt won’t grow weeds, it won’t grow nothing.”

It seems that my Dad had complained regularly about weeds in the garden. He told the story of complaining as they worked the garden. My Pappy would always say, “If dirt won’t grow weeds, it won’t grow nothing.”

That piece of wisdom has made me wonder so many times. The scripture talks about good soil and the crop that it produces. But let’s face it. If you just put seed in the ground and never pull weeds or fertilize, there will not be a crop.

I don’t know for sure, but if the soil of our heart is good soil won’t it grow weeds along with a crop? I mean soil doesn’t know the difference in seed…it is just the home where seeds grow. Perhaps as we live and take in ideas and thoughts and news it lodges in the soil of our heart where it can take root and grow. It doesn’t need to be God’s truth. It just gets planted there.

We must be diligent as God’s children. We must allow Him to shine the light of His truth on the garden of our heart so that we can “see the weeds”. I can’t be positive, but it seems that a heart is like soil. It’s gonna grow something…probably whatever we allow to be planted there. But we can weed out falsehood and false teaching. Confess and repent. Or simply discard the wrong ideas and teaching. We can tend the garden of our heart, allowing God’s truth to take root and grow…not the weeds of the world.

My Pappy’s simple statement about soil gave me a word picture for this scripture, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.” Proverbs 4:23