Pulling Weeds from Your Field of Dreams
By David Hansen
July 1, 1994
In western Montana, a weed imported from France, spotted knapweed, plagues some of our best agricultural areas and is moving swiftly into wilderness areas. Only sheep will eat it. Cattle, deer, and elk won't touch it. A meadow of knapweed won't support a cow. A hillside of it will not feed elk. An infestation of knapweed can destroy a hay or grain field.
Beekeepers imported the plant for its purple blossoms that produce copious nectar even during drought years. The weed is unbelievably hardy, thriving in the driest of weather. It competes unfairly with natural flora; it grows over three feet tall so it shades shorter grasses. But if you clip it, knapweed will blossom at two inches off the ground.
Its most pernicious characteristic, however, is that knapweed is allelopathic. Knapweed's roots secrete a toxic substance that stunts and even kills the plants in its vicinity.
Toxic weeds thrive in visions for ministry, too. It is just as true of spiritual tilth as it is of good dirt: "It will produce thorns and thistles for you" (Gen. 3:18). A fertile spiritual imagination is just as good at growing weeds as a crop. I've noticed at least three weeds that can flourish in my pastoral visions.
THE DREAM WEED
I love being somewhere long enough to watch kids grow up. I love preaching through whole books of the Bible. I love watching a church grow and change over time. I love presiding at funerals for people I've called on and loved for a long time.
But I really dislike receiving phone calls, back to back, one from Euodia telling me that we should have vacation Bible school in June because that's the only time we can get any teachers, and one from Syntyche saying that we should have VBS in August because three years ago at a Christian ed ...
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