The Rates of Growth of Grass and Weeds

In my blog post yesterday, I used grass as an example of change and growth taking time, but in a comment on that blog post, my Mom correctly pointed out that while "It takes time for grass to grow; it doesn't take much time for weeds to grow." This is a very important point. True growth, positive growth, takes far more time and effort than other kinds of change. Good habits take time and effort to develop; bad habits seem to develop on their own.

There are many reasons for this. In our eternal trajectory, we are trying to travel uphill, though traveling downhill is the path of least resistance. It is far easier to make bad choices than good choices partly because there are far more of them and partly because the good choices require more discipline. The natural man is more interested in growing briers and thorns than in growing grass or flowers, and Satan doesn't help much either.

There are many forces working against us, growing weeds in the gardens of our hearts. To keep our gardens clean and growing well, we must frequently weed our internal gardens and continually strive to foster the growth of good plants. It isn't easy, and it takes far more time to gain progress than it takes to lose progress, but that's we need to be faithful and diligent. We need to take an active role in our internal gardens to keep our good habits growing steadily and to prevent them from being overrun with weeds.