I was once told by a friend of mine about someone she knew at college who, when it came to a topic of study that she didn’t like or found difficult, would go outside an sweep leaves. That topic was forever know as “sweeping leaves.” Some of us have other distraction techniques when we want to avoid doing something, making a coffee or perhaps reading the newspaper.
A few weeks back I was looking out of the window at our garden at the carpet of leaves covering the grass, we have a huge oak tree at the front of the house, and the grass was covered with leaves and acorns. With nothing better to do, I decided to go out and tidy up, sweeping the leaves up into mounds.
For me, sweeping leaves is less of a distraction technique and more of a time for reflection and thinking – ( and getting inspiration for this TFTD).
Having trundled four heaped barrow loads of leaves to the compost heap, I stood back and looked at the area I’d been working on. What had been a patchwork carpet of yellows, rust colour and browns was now a slightly tidier carpet of green grass shoots poking through – there’s always some leaves left, no matter how hard you try!
Thinking about our faith, we might decide to “sweep away the old”, as beautiful as it may be to allow the young shoots to poke through. It may be that the process of “sweeping away the old,” is a distraction technique for avoiding what we really should be facing, or that it is an opportunity to reflect. The “old” does however have an important place in our faith.
The leaves that I swept up, go on a leaf heap to make nutritious compost to feed the fruit and veg that we will grow in the months and years to come.
Let us not discard the “old”as worthless, rather let us reuse, refresh and recycle to help new shoots of faith burst through. “New” growth needs “old” compost.