RE: [TruthTalk] Re [Truth Talk] Saved -- Salvation -- and the pigpen

[ShieldsFamily]

The “blue collar working class” in me loves to keep busy at homemaking and gardening.  That’s when I am the undoubtedly the happiest. Perhaps that’s because while my body is engaged in work my mind is free to do some of its best thinking.  The Holy Spirit is free to whisper lessons in my spiritual ear as my body labors.  As I was cleaning out the winter-ravaged flower beds this morning I came across some mint interspersed in the patch of purple phlox.  I remembered how I promised myself at the end of last summer to tear out that mint come next spring, and spring is here.  The mint had overtaken the phlox too thoroughly to tear it out without damaging the full-grown phlox by the time I discovered it last summer.  It is easier to rip it out before it has grown so tall and become so thoroughly interspersed in other vegetation.   Mint is not a bad thing in itself I found myself thinking.  It is, in fact, a very good herb for flavoring teas and foods and soaps with its wonderful taste and scent.  What is bad is too much mint, and in the wrong places.  Mint has to be kept isolated in a garden, well away from other plants, or its invasive nature will destroy everything in its aggressive path.  A wise gardener will be alert and diligent enough to catch such a threat early, before it is too late and the entire garden has to be uprooted.   The same thing could be said of certain beliefs.  In and of themselves they may be very true and good things.  It is only when they are elevated to the importance of “doctrine” and become overgrown and entangled enough to choke out the true essentials of the faith that they become dangerous.  Hopefully the Believer will recognize them and keep such beliefs in their place before they take over sound doctrine, and need to be ripped out by the roots.  If they are ignored too long such beliefs can become entangling growths, choking the life out of all who are unwittingly captured in their paths.    Matt 13: 24Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, "(U)The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.   25"But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed [a]tares among the wheat, and went away.   26"But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also.    27"The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?'    28"And he said to them, 'An enemy has done this!' The slaves said to him, 'Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?'    29"But he said, 'No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them.    30'Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn."'"   God, in His mercy, allows the contaminated and the uncontaminated to grow side by side and undisturbed until That Day, when all will be judged.  At the End of the Age, the angels will come forth and separate the tares from the wheat, much as I am cleaning out the flower beds today.  The end result will be a garden as God intended it at Creation.  Izzy