We are so blessed to live where we do.  Some wonderful life-long friends have been so gracious to provide a lovely home that we love dearly.  For three years prior to our move-in, no one lived in the house.  While no ONE lived IN the house, SQUIRRELS continued to live – unchecked – OUTSIDE the house.

These industrious, and seemingly amnesiac, creatures used our flower beds as their winter food cache.  We now have quite an assortment of tree saplings and other bushes teeming with 3 year old joie de vie. I spent a day of my off-time cleaning out some of the de vie.  It was not joie for me.

You see, the flower beds provided a visual reminder of the dangers of neglect.  I had to consult my landscaping friend Josh to help me identify the most aggravating of the invaders.  This thorny, invasive flora parasite is called smilax.  I’m sure in some foreign language that word translates some sort of profanity.  Smilax enjoyed three unattended years to spread throughout our flower beds.

I spent the better part of New Years’ day clipping and detangling the smilax from the fauna we actually WANT.  I asked Josh what I had to do to get rid of it, hoping that my current efforts would suffice.  He told me that to have any chance of completely eradicating it, I would need to find its source. 

This devil in disguise emanates from an underground tuber that shoots rhizomes in multiple directions.  Then the rhizomes pop up and start growing upward, wrapping themselves around whatever they find.  And, by the way, the thorns HURT.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the material from which Roman soldiers made Jesus’ crown of thorns.  It’s THAT EVIL.

2 Lessons to Learn About Neglect

So, really, there are two lessons to learn here.  First, don’t neglect thorny issues in your life.  Nothing ever gets easier to resolve with time.  In Matthew 5:25, Jesus instructed us to “deal with your adversary quickly.”  Whether your adversary is a person or a circumstance, go ahead and deal with it now.  The longer you wait the more difficult it becomes.

The second lesson is that to truly deal with issues, we must get to the root.  Mollifying symptoms only delays resolution.  Get down to the real nitty-gritty and discover the causes.  As my friend Bobby Simpson of Higher Ground Softball teaches, be willing to discuss the undiscussables.  The longer we only deal with what is evident above the surface, the more the root spreads it’s effect.

What Now?

So, what ONE THING will you get to the bottom of TODAY?  What will you stop procrastinating about and resolve at the ROOT NOW?

Make the phone call, set up a meeting, sit down and talk.  Get to the bottom of things and you will find relief you never knew you could experience. Don’ just REACT… PRE-ACT. (You can read more about that by clicking here.

Hebrews 12:15 – See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.