yard work

I finally got all my leaves ready for pickup. I had raked them into nice piles about a month ago. Here in Asheboro, the city will come by and vacuum them up if you pile them on the curb. I've not had an opportunity to get them to the curb til today. They're all piled up, on the curb, ready for the big vacuum truck to come by. Well, almost all. I left one big pile for the boys to play in, partly as a reward for helping me get them to the curb.

As I was wrapping things up, I surveyed the yard. I compared my yard with many that I have seen. Some yards are absolutely immaculate. There is not even a stem from a leaf to be found. My yard, by those standards still has quite a few scattered here and there. I'm also one of the last in my neighborhood to get the leaves to the curb. Some guys finished their immaculate yards back before Thanksgiving. But I'm satisfied with how my yard looks.

Of course, I began to look at this situation with spiritual metaphors in mind. There are about a gazillion that could be explored. I'll leave the exploration up to you. I'm just going to list a few.
- The scattered remnants of leaves are like the remnants of sin left in our lives, even after our "conversion experience". What can be done about those and how does it affect our faith journey?
- I may be satisfied with my yard/current state of my faith journey, but should I be? How does God feel about it? Am I ignoring something important for my journey?
- from a more cynical perspective, are the yards that LOOK more immaculate on the surface any better than the others around it?

Just a thought.