My Lawn and a Lesson for Spiritual Life

My little patch of “lawn” in front of our house has taken a beating. Susie actually suggested taking it out, I balked at the very idea, I would have none of that. It is a small patch that connects me to where I am from, Germany, oh so green Germany.(Green Germany Pictured Above)The two-pronged assault on this precious 10x12 foot blanket of green has been the lack of water and the dog my girls manipulated me into back in February. It was looking so good too; the long wet spring helped it to be lush. But if you were to look at it now that word would not cross your mind.The other day it hit me, “that lawn is like my spiritual life and prayer.” Prayer connects me to where we are really from (“our citizenship is in heaven,” Philippians 3:20). Without regular and constant prayer my spiritual life wilts, and with it the vitality – the green, disappears from my spiritual life. When that happens I do not have the strength, nor the mindset for the Christianlife, and before long I resemble the world around me. I don’t know about you but no one in the right mind will roll in the dry grass of Don Pedro (California) in September, it is utterly uninviting, totally unlike a luscious green lawn God wants me to be.(Dry Don Pedro Pictured Above)The reason it started drying out was because I had to change control modules for the sprinkler system. I thought I could skip a watering time when I installed the new one, but in the heat of the summer once a day just isn’t enough. In the heat of life less prayer has the same result on my spiritual life. I am back to watering it twice a day and the patches the dog hasn’t touched are greening up and growing again.Speaking of the dog, I don’t know what her obsession with digging up my little patch of hallowed ground (if you have advice on how to keep her from digging up my lawn please don’t hold back, thegermanshepherd@juno.com). I do know that our spiritual lives are continually under assault. Sometimes by things that are cute and frivolous, by the annoying, the useless (that dog is not pulling her weight), but also by the destructive, and by those who couldn’t give a hoot about our spiritual lives.If I want to stay spiritually healthy, if I do not want to “grow weary of doing good and lose heart” (Hebrews 12:3), if I want to reflect where I am truly from, then I need to pay attention to my watering/praying schedule and be careful not let things go to the dogs/repair daily what has been dug up and devastated.Be green, love you, and to God be all glory, Pastor Hans