Good Jobs After the Rain

Last night we had a rain while I was sleeping away.  A good time to pull up weeds is after a rain, when the rain has settled into the ground.  The ground is soft and it is just an easier chore.  Pulling weeds is back breaking work as you must bend over to reach them (that is for the uninitiated  among you).The growth that I attacked early this morning had the same weeds of varying  heights.  Some barely one inch high, but if allowed to reach full growth would have at least two thousand seeds in the fall.  Obviously, I have neglected them in the past at this one spot around my Acuba in back of my house.  Some of those weeds were almost four feet high.

As I was bending over and then standing up to pitch the handful of weeds to the collection place, something occurred to me.  When Adam and Eve were banned from the Garden of Eden and turned out to toil for the rest of their lives, did God plan to make them regret their disobedience?  Every time I bent over I  had a humbling  feeling , like I was bowing before God .  It made me wonder if Adam and Eve had to pull weeds and if so did they feel like they were bowing before God?  If the Garden of Eden was perfect, then there were probably no weeds there.  Perfection was a given.

Perfection is not a given in humans, it takes hard work to become proficient in anything to reach perfection.  It also takes dedication to a cause and usually a lot of time, perhaps practicing for a certain skill, over a long, long time.  I was watching some high dive performers and to be able to do some of those twists and flips and enter the water with hardly a ripple, requires a supreme effort.

One could compare their regimen to working toward perfection in lifes most challenging endeavor.  What comes to mind for me is human relationships.  It may be that achieving that perfect plane is actually impossible.  There are too many variables to make it possible.  A machine can be designed to make something perfect over and over, and maybe even when it interacts with another machine, as on an assembly line.  But for us humans it just does not happen.  Too much has to be taken into consideration to have harmony with another person.  You must be able to understand how that other person feels about a given situation.

If Ronald Reagen was a good communicator, he no doubt had a habit of looking at all sides of a situation when he was trying to achieve a certain result, with another person.  It does not require any skill at all when you bend over to pull up weeds.  It helps to have a good strong back, and a good dose of humility as you bow down to the ground. It does have its rewards however. A sort of cleansing both in the appearance of your garden and in clearing your mind.