We were staying on a friend’s property in our caravan recently. This place had high hedges around the paddock edges. Our friend had taken his hedge trimming machine into these paddocks to cut and trim back the tall trees, and this had only made a worse mess than ever. The branches and cut pieces of the trees all fell on the ground beneath as they were cut off. There was no way the grass would grow up fresh and sweet there.

We went home and came back the following week. By this time he had taken his tractor into the paddock again, and had pushed all the scraps and branches into large heaps ready for burning when the weather was right. It was surprising what a large area was now clear right up to the tree trunks, enabling the grass to grow there as extra feed for the cattle.

It made me think how this is a lot like our lives. We allow things to creep in and crowd out what is helpful to others. Our time is taken up with things of no real value, and we have no time for the things that matter. Sometimes the things that we do are creative and beautiful, but if we can’t give them away to someone who appreciates them, we are really just wasting our time. Other things are just frivolous time fillers just to keep us occupied.

These are the things that need to be cut off and let fall to the ground, and then pushed up into piles and burned. Let’s make sure that we clean up around the edges of our lives, and give ourselves more time and space to do things for others.

The Bible talks about building our lives with wood, hay and stubble, and how these things are easily burned, whereas if we build with valuable metals these only get refined if a fire goes through them  (1 Corinthians 3:11-15).