Not long ago as I was traveling along a highway I noticed a lady working on the side of her driveway raking grass away from the gravel.
This was not a short driveway and run a good distance from the highway to her home. It was not a paved driveway and I was thinking why she would be raking weeds or grass from the side of her gravel drive.
It is not uncommon to see people cleaning up debris or trash from a long winding driveway or maybe planting shrubs or flowers to beautify the lane, but this was neither the case. She was simply cleaning the grass and weeds from the side leaving a clear path between the gravel and the edge of the grass.
Not only did I wonder why she would put so much effort into this but it was a very hot day and she was not under the shade of trees. As I drove on down the highway I thought to myself about why this lady was doing this.
Even though it looked like something I probably wouldn’t bother with she was keeping her driveway from being overrun by unwanted and unsightly weeds and grass. As I thought about this I wondered how many of us do preventive maintenance on our life and how we live it?
How many of us allow unwanted desires and problems to enter our life and then wish we had been better prepared to stop them? We are all tempted to do things we shouldn’t.
There is an old saying, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
What a tremendous statement if only we would adhere to it. Jesus told us in Matthew 26:41: “Watch and pray lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
When we are faced with tribulations, problems, and weakness of the body and mind, let’s remember what Jesus told us. All of us need to watch and pray in everything that we do or attempt.
Just as the lady was preventing the weeds and grass from overtaking her driveway we all need to do this with our bodies and our spirit.
I have heard that many doctors pride themselves on prevention of disease instead of curing disease.
Wouldn’t we all be better off if we did the same thing in our spiritual and physical life?
GARY ANDREWS' devotional appears each week on the Church Pages of your Clarksdale Press Register. You can contact him at GARY@gadevotionals.com
