I spent about an hour this morning pulling weeds. (Yes - it is such a rare event that I need to announce it to the world!)

A weed, of course, is any plant growing where you do not want it to grow. To quote Webster's dictionary: a weed is "a plant that is not valued where it is growingA rosebush in a cornfield is a weed.  A stately oak tree, too close to a house, roots cracking the foundation, is a weed.

The definition of weed is purely subjective. It is a plant growing where I do not want it to grow.

Our attitudes toward other people can be surprisingly similar.  In fact, there is a German folk saying. If an unpleasant person shows up, one person might whisper to another "Unkraut vergeht nicht" (there's no getting rid of weeds.)

But the weeds in my flower bed can also be seen as signs of the fecundity of God's good earth. And the person who is irritating may have come your way bringing some hidden gift, a gift that you may not even know you need. Once, interviewing for a pastoral position, a member of the search committee kept asking probing, and challenging, questions. I thought to myself, "She looks like a pain in the neck!" After the meeting I thought again: "Yes, but she will be a useful pain in the neck," not letting me slide by with half-thought answers.  

Perhaps if we were more reflective, less self-centered, but more self-aware, we might join in Gerard Manley Hopkins' hymn of praise:

What would the world be, once bereft           

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,     

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

            - from Inversnaid

                                                                 - Bill