🎧 Listen to this episode → 117 | You Can't Leave the Ground Empty

My weeds have taught me something I did not want to learn: you cannot leave the ground empty.

Something is always going to grow there. The only question is what.

The bed that humbles me

I have a long herb bed — twelve feet of it — and I cannot keep the weeds out of it to save my life.

I don't fully know why. The soil in there is rich, and it gets watered regularly, so it is basically a five-star resort for weeds. The lawn crew blows grass clippings into it every week. Whatever the reason, that bed is relentless. I clear it, and by the next time I'm out there it looks like I never touched it. And it isn't even mostly in the beds — it's all around them, creeping into the paths, filling every space between, until the whole garden reads as unkempt.

Here is where I have landed: I am not going to win this one.

I will never have the weed-free, Pinterest-perfect garden — the one in the photos where every bed is edged and immaculate and nothing is out of place. That garden does not exist at my house, and it is not going to.

And I have come to be grateful for that. Those weeds keep me honest. They break the illusion that I can do all the things, all the time, perfectly. Every time I walk outside they remind me that my capacity has real limits, and that some things have to be let go. I cannot tend every inch. Nobody can. The weeds are a standing sermon on the fact that I am not God and my garden is not heaven — and that is okay.

But kneeling in that bed, I learned something else. This is the part I actually want to hand you.

You don't beat the weeds by clearing the ground. You beat them by filling it.

Bare soil does not stay bare. That is simply not how the world works.

Empty ground is not resting ground — it is recruiting ground. Leave a patch of dirt open and watered and nutritious, and something will move in. If you don't plant something good there, the weeds will plant themselves. Nature does not tolerate an empty space. It always fills it, and if you didn't choose what fills it, it chooses for you.

That is exactly why gardeners mulch, and cover-crop, and tuck a plant into a gap. We're not decorating. We're occupying the space on purpose so that something else can't. If your paths are the problem like mine, staying ahead of the weeds and refreshing your mulch in summer are the two things that actually move the needle.

The house that was swept clean — and left empty

Now listen to what Jesus said, because it is the same truth in different soil.

"When an unclean spirit comes out of a person… it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first." — Matthew 12:43–45

The spirit leaves. The house gets swept, cleaned, put in order — and left empty. And because it is empty, the thing comes back, brings seven worse ones, and moves right in.

Do you see it? The problem was not that the house was dirty. The problem was that it was vacant. Cleaned out, with nothing good living there.

This is where so many of us get stuck, myself very much included. We think the spiritual life is mostly about removing — quit the habit, cut out the influence, stop the thought, get rid of the sin. That work is real. But if all you do is empty the space, you have not won. You have left rich, watered, open ground, and something is going to grow in it.

You cannot only stop the scrolling, or stop the drinking, or stop the bitterness, and leave the hole. You have to plant something in the place where it used to be. A practice. A presence. Time in the Word. A better thing you actually cultivate.

Because the space where you pulled the weed will not stay empty. It will grow something. The only question is what.

Pull by the root — a little at a time, forever

The second thing is about the daily grind of it.

You cannot cut a weed off at the surface. I have learned that the hard way. Cut it and you haven't killed it; often you've just sent it spreading. The only thing that truly touches a weed is pulling the root — and even then it comes back.

So I have stopped waiting for the one triumphant weekend where I finally conquer the garden. That weekend is not coming. Instead, every time I go outside — every single time — I pull a little. A handful here. A corner there. It never finishes. And it is the only thing keeping the garden from being swallowed.

That is the shape of the real spiritual life too. Not one dramatic deliverance where the bitterness or the fear is gone forever, but a daily, ordinary, unglamorous pulling — going after the root, not the surface, a little every day, for the rest of your life. It isn't thrilling. It doesn't photograph well. But it is faithful, and it is the difference between a life that's tended and a life that gets overrun.

One faithful response this week

Find one cleared but empty spot — a habit you dropped, a corner of your day that went hollow, a bed you weeded and left bare — and plant one good thing in it. Not ten. One. On purpose.

Give the ground something to grow that you actually chose.

A gentle question

Where have you been working hard to clear something out — and left the space empty behind it?

🎧 Listen to the full episode → 117 | You Can't Leave the Ground Empty

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