Hope that Transforms 4

When we moved from Texas to Arkansas, the Lord blessed us with a nice home that was in a stalled development. Har-Ber Meadows was the dream of a philantropist named Bernice Young Jones. She had envisioned a 600+ home development that was characterized by sitting porches, rear entry garages, and 55 acres of parks and lakes. There were stringent rules on the architecture, to the extent that after about 75 homes were built, the subdivision died.

We were able to purchase a home at about half the original asking price because it had sat there empty for nearly three years. The home was great. The yard? Well, not so much. The builder placed sod around the circumference of the house, but as a cost saving measure, simply seeded the rest of the lot. The house was great but the yard was horrible.

I called a lawn service company to come and provide and estimate of what it would take to turn the yard around. After walking around the yard for a few minutes, he told me that I had no lawn to rescue! It was all weeds. He suggested that I have the lawn saturated with weed killer the re-sod the entire lawn. When I saw the estimate possessed a number with a comma, I knew I had to come up with “Plan B.”

In St. Louis we had learned how to groom and maintain zoysia grass. It was pretty simple and very low maintenance. Then in Texas we learned all about St. Augustine grass, which was so sharp and brittle it felt like walking on broken glass. The advice I received in Arkansas was to plug my lawn with bermuda grass. Bermuda grass sends out runners and spreads quickly. So I went to the store and picked up two 6′ rolls of bermuda sod and began to place plugs in random spots throughout my yard. Guess what? Within a year the bermuda grass had spread like wildfire, choking out all of the weeds. My lawn went from worst to first!

The reason I tell this simple story is to illustrate how the resurrection of Jesus transforms our lives. When a person commits their life to become a follower of Christ, he goes to work and plugs our weed filled lives with his love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness. Given time, those plugs begin to crowd out all of the stuff that gets in the way of us reaching our God given potential.

There are two ways we can approach life. We can focus on weed management or we can allow God’s love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness transform us from the inside out. Weed management doesn’t work. It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. The only way we can experience life change is inside out by the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ!