The root of sin runs deep

I put on meditation sounds and relaxed on a mat. In the quiet, I found my mind moving from thought to thought. I asked God for a verse to meditate on. My mind sorted verses from a file as I waited for the right one. I knew the right verse would come.

“Ask and it will be given...”

What should I ask for, I wondered? I pondered. Then, it came to me. Ask for an open heart.

Give me an open heart.

Open to what or to whom, I wondered. The answer was immediate.

Open to God. Open to what He has to say to me.

So, I imagined an open heart. A melting heart. Stone to flesh.

And I waited, listening to the music.

I saw myself in a garden. In it I saw a weed in the dirt. It was a weed of sin, inflicted on me by others and inflicted on others by me. Inflicted on me by me. The root was deep.

I imagined a hand trying to uproot that weed. It must be the hand of God, I thought.

The root broke off, like a dandelion, just beneath the surface. Then, the hand used a gardening tool to dig down, but the tool wouldn’t reach the end of the root. I imagined it going down, down...

I asked God, “What if the root goes through all eternity?”

I needed every fragment of the weed gone.

I saw a wider, deeper circle around the weed being dug, but still, the root remained. I imagined a large machine, the kind used to dig a trench or a huge hole. The machine could not reach the end of the root.

Too deep.

I was saddened and wondered how the root of that sin was even too deep for God to extract.

I felt hopeless.

After staring at the root, anchored in the dirt. I looked around and saw I wasn’t in a garden, as I had first imagined, but a vast area of black dirt.

Dark. Black. Dirt.

I looked to one side and saw a beautiful garden. Lush. Peaceful. No weeds.

This was where the music was coming from.

And Jesus was there.

It was then I realized the hand trying to uproot the weed was not God’s; it was mine.

I was working tirelessly trying to uproot that weed.

Then, Jesus invited me into the garden.

A garden where there were no weeds.

He didn’t speak, but his gaze was asking me where I would rather be: In the dirt trying to eradicate the sin in my life—and the lives of others—or in the garden with him.

I wanted to be in the garden with Jesus.

As I looked at the beautiful garden, I wondered about the weeds of sin and why the garden was void of them.

Jesus looked beyond the garden; I looked in the same direction.

Then I saw the cross. The weeds were all there. Every single one.

They were already uprooted and dead, as Jesus had been.

Jesus had been uprooted from the earth and dead on the cross.

The weeds were still there, dead. But Jesus was here, alive. No longer on the cross.

He lived.

Sin died.

The weeds were all uprooted and dead. The evidence was there.

I stayed in the garden, walking with Jesus and listening to the music.

I felt free.