April 17, 2000
DOWN HOME:
You can't give yourself the all-time greatest gift
___"I called David," Joanna told me one day as I walked in the door from work. "Your bushes are coming out."
___If ever I want to look back to a time to confirm my wife's love, I will recall that moment.
___When we moved into this house, we inherited light-green shrubs growing on either side of the sidewalk, up next to the house, between the front door and the rest of the world.
___I'm not sure the actual name of those bushes. If they asked me to give them a scientific name, it would be flora chaoticus monstrosicus. These things were wild and woolly.
MARV KNOX
Editor
___By the way, If you ever buy an ugly house and you don't want anybody to notice, plant a few of these vegetative ogres across the front of your castle and forget to trim them for, oh, about a month. After three weeks, nobody will be able to see your house.
___I fought those shrubs for four summers. Except for the weeks of most extreme drought, they roughly tripled in size every 72 hours. Not really. But it seemed like it. From April through at least October, I had to trim them practically every week. And still they incrementally grew beyond manageability.
___Jo sensed my dread. Before I even had a chance to psyche myself to take on the twin towers another summer, she called David, our friend and landscaper extraordinaire. "Pull 'em," she commanded, before I even knew what was up and could protest, feebly if not hypocritically.
___So now we have vacant spots where the hedges used to be. David's going to come soon and plant something tasteful and attractive. And best of all, slow-growing.
___My wife's phone call ordering the exhumation of our bushes reminds me of something my dad used to say: "The best gifts are the ones you'd never buy for yourself."
___He told me this one time after he received a gift from a friend in our church. The gift--I forget what it was, but that's really beside the point--was something Daddy wanted, but he never would lavish it upon himself.
___And that made the present all the more precious, he explained.
___Same thing with the shrubs. I hated them. They were ugly. Their trimmed leaves looked like trash. And I detested their chaotic growth. But I just couldn't make the call to have them hauled. I'm too cheap, Jo would say.
___In a small--and I do mean infinitesimal--way, Jo's gift of getting rid of the shrubs is like the gift of Calvary, which we celebrate this week.
___She did for me something I wouldn't do for myself. On the Cross, Jesus paid the price for our sin, a debt we never could pay. His sinless life bought eternity for our sin-filled lives.
___Happy Easter. You're sins are forgiven. You've been redeemed.
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