ChosenRebel's Blog

It’s taken four weeks. The last two of those weeks, I have been largely one-handed. That’s what happens when the smiling surgeon cuts a cancer out of the back of your hand and closes up the wound with 21 stitches. Simple things you never thought of as difficult suddenly are. The healing process makes you lazy. “It’s too hard to do it one-handed, so why bother at all?”

Trouble is, life doesn’t care. It moves on with its tasks and opportunities and laughs at you in the rearview mirror. If I don’t get off my butt and get things done, pretty soon life becomes almost unmanageable.

Four weeks ago, after two days of rain, the weather turned warm, the skies dried up, and the grass popped up. Neighbors and I went out and cut our lawns, if that is what you can call them. My “lawn” like all of my neighbors’, is a collection of yellow wood sorrel with its delicate population of small flowers, purple dead nettle, spring onions, bits of rye grass, chickweed, quack grass, field madder weed (pretty but troublesome), three or four other grasses I haven’t identified, and of course, dandelions. A beautiful yellow flower today and a terrifying puffball of seeds tomorrow, just waiting to pounce on every square foot of soil it can conquer.

There are some wonderful things about dandelions, most of which I don’t appreciate. You can pull them up by the roots, clean them off, dry them out, chop them up, roast them, and use them as a substitute for coffee. The leaves and flowers are anti-inflammatory and can be thrown in a salad or brewed as a tea. I don’t think the puff balls are good for anything except as a frustratiant to people who don’t want them in their lawns. My father, years ago, made dandelion wine, which I hear from some is quite good. My father never made it again. 

Anyway, this story isn’t about dandelions or foraging for food growing right under our feet. (By the way, purple dead nettle and yellow wood sorrel make excellent teas and are also anti-inflammatory. Wood sorrel is a lemony snack you can pick and eat raw or throw in a salad.)

No, this story isn’t about that; it’s about Psalm 108 and a question a friend asked me when I posted a brief meditation on the first verse. It was a post about the need for honesty of soul when we study the Scripture. He confessed that he was in a dry time in his spiritual life, that there was a dry Saharan wind blowing through the crevices of his spirit. If we are honest, all of us have been there at some point in our lives. Spiritual battle is relentless.

Which brings me back to dandelions and Psalm 108:1. Fighting dandelions is a relentless work. Every time I have needed a break from inside work or study, I have gone outside and, with one hand, picked dandelion flowers, puff balls, and whole plants from my yard. But tomorrow, the battle will rage again. And the battle is much larger because every day, all of the puff balls filled with seed glow in from my neighbors’ yards. Relentless. It never stops. This evening, the yard is free. Tomorrow it won’t be. I am winning, but it won’t stop.

Psalm 108 begins with these words:

“My heart is steadfast, O God;”

The old KJV translated it as “My heart is fixed.” The Hebrew root means “to stand erect.” The idea is of standing something up in a firm position. David, the psalmist, using two psalms written earlier in his life (Psalm 57:7-11 and 60:7-14), brings them back together here as “a warrior’s morning prayer” (Spurgeon). He rises in the morning to declare his trust in God is steadfast, and announces his intent to sing the praises of God from the depths of his soul. 

But what do you do when your heart is wavering?

Spurgeon has some advice for us.

“Sometimes we must climb to praise by the ladder of prayer,
and at other times
we must bless God for the past
in order to be able in faith
to plead for the present and the future.”

It’s relentless. Like dandelions.