This previously appeared in my blog (2017).

Last week I noticed that one of the people in our street had a large, actually huge, pile of mulch in their driveway.  It had a sign stating that the mulch is free: please help by taking some away.  I have made many, many trips down the road with a wheelbarrow and shovel.  First I mulched the front yard, making sure to cover every garden bed (I wanted the front yard to all match).  Then I pondered whether I should do the back yard also.  The mulch is still there and the pile is still enormous, since my many wheelbarrow-loads have barely diminished it. 

I wondered why anyone would give away that much mulch for free.  It turns out that the neighbours got a truck load from the council.  The council gives residents free mulch but never in amounts less than a truck load.  A truck load of mulch is too much for one person to use.  So the people with the mulch are giving away most of it to other residents of our street and even advertising it on Gumtree.  The mulch seems to be endless.

On the weekend I decided that I would mulch the back yard also.  But getting mulch to the back yard is much harder than getting it to the front yard.  Our house is built on a hill, so to mulch the back yard involves pushing the wheelbarrow down a steep driveway and using a bucket to get it down the back steps.  No wonder I had to think hard before doing that.  I only mulched some of the garden beds in the back because I ran out of energy, even though I have by no means exhausted the supply of free mulch.

What does this have to do with the grace of God?  While I was filling the wheelbarrow this morning I “saw” the parallels between the huge pile of mulch and the grace of God.  The grace of God is enormous.  It is free for anyone to take hold of.  There is never a charge for grace and is always abundant.  Unlike the mulch, it really is endless.  However, like the mulch, in order for the grace of God to have value to us, we must take hold of it.  It is always available but if you don’t grasp hold of it, it does you no good.  There has to be a deliberate decision to take hold of God’s grace.

The parable has another part to it.  There is a big difference between the “front yard” of my life and the “back yard”.  The front yard is seen by everyone.  I try to keep it neat because the neighbours don’t want to live next to people with six-foot-high weeds.  My life is similar.  There are aspects of my life that are public so I apply the grace of God to those quite readily.  That way my life looks good for public viewing.  But the back yard is not so visible.  Only a few people can see that.  If it looks awful well the neighbours can’t see it and won’t complain.  The hidden parts of my life are just that, hidden.  I am perhaps less likely to avail myself of God’s grace in those hidden parts of life.  It is much more work to deal with the hidden bits and perhaps I think of it as too much effort.  Yet I need grace in the “back yard” just as much as in my “front yard”, if not more.