Runaway Bushes

It was an old cemetery, dating to early in the nineteenth century. Many of the most revered names in the town were represented there.

I was amazed at the creativity demonstrated in the old markers. Some monuments were taller than my balding head, some short and wide. Some were brick, some concrete, many granite, one was metal. A concrete flower decorated one slab.

A major problem to the caretakers were the shrubs and bushes planted long ago, as a living memorial to loved ones. Who knew that a foot-high shrub would become a thirty-foot tree? Flowering bushes, planted in a narrow space between two slabs, thirty years later had nearly covered both markers. A sapling planted next to one grave was now a towering oak, and no one wanted to contemplate where the roots extended.

I Peter 2:5 says, "Let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." Have you tended your 'building project,' or is it just growing wild?