Seeds or Weeds

I picked up my granddaughter, TaterTot, from preschool today and she wanted to hear the song “The Lord is my light and my salvation” repeatedly. It’s her current favorite. She just sat in her booster seat and sang it over and over and over. That was okay because I love to hear kids sing, particularly songs about the Lord. Those words will stay with her long after it’s no longer the favorite. I know that from personal experience because my own mind is stuffed full of song lyrics, sometimes just a little scrap and sometimes the whole song. On the positive side of that, most of the bible verses I know have come from singing scripture songs.

Now, I also have in my mind many lyrics of oldies. It’s not that they are valuable; I just can’t seem to forget them. It’s like my hard drive is cluttered and needs to be defragmented with many inconsequential memories permanently deleted. Then I would have room for the important new data that needs to be stored there.

I used to tell my students that they needed to take some hard courses and learn difficult procedures and facts in school, because in doing that they were building shelves that could later store important things. If they never did anything challenging, they wouldn’t exercise their brain. As I studied the brain later, I wasn’t too far off. All those little convolutions may actually be like shelves.

Much of our life is determined by what we have stored on those shelves. Some things we store on purpose (that’s called learning) and some just jump in there through our senses like our eyes or ears. That is why it is so important for all of us and particularly little ones not to “feed” our minds with junk. Some years ago we were in a musical about planting good seeds and learned that if we plant weeds in our minds, weeds are what we will harvest. Good seeds produce a good harvest.

I have seen some weeds (scenes in movies) that I would so much like to forget. But there must be a cosmic law that says, “The quickest way to forget something is to try to remember it, and the surest way to remember something is to try to forget it." I have tried to pull up those weeds from my mind, but they just won’t go. “Be careful little eyes what you see.”

Perhaps the reason violent crimes and ugly behavior have become so prevalent is that society feeds on them for entertainment. There are not many TV shows that offer good seeds. I don’t listen to a lot of popular music, but I am aware that much fits into the “weed” category. “Be careful little ears what you hear.”

Enough weedy stuff; I want to get back to good things we can store on our shelves. Solomon said, “My son, keep my words and store up my commands within you. Keep my commands and you will live; guard my teachings. . . write them on the tablet of your heart.”

I’m with TaterTot. Let’s sing that song over and over.

The Lord is my light and my salvation,—of whom shall I be afraid?