The Parable of the Air Potato

To stray from my normal theme of going through the alphabet letter by letter, I thought I'd mix things up a bit with a parable. So without further ado, I give you, The Parable of the Air Potato.

And there went certain missionaries to the Ravine Gardens State Park to more fully "go about doing good" (Acts 10:38).

And that's about as far as my Bible lingo goes. Our first task, and one that will be our most frequent task in our volunteer work at the Ravine Gardens, was that of picking up air potatoes.

What, you may ask is an air potato? An excellent question, which I will now address. Air potatoes come from a vine that was brought to Florida from Asia long ago as a decorative plant. The vine however has become a weed that is choking out the natural vegetation. This vine has leaves that form a heart shape and produces countless air potatoes which drop to the ground. These air potatoes cannot be used for anything, it's only function is to produce more of this vine. Each air potato has  the potential to become a new vine producing even more air potatoes and choking out even more vegetation. You can see how this is a problem.

One of the larger air potatoes

Our task was to gather these air potatoes before they became new vines. We gather them and they then are thrown in garbage dispenser to be taken to a landfill. We started out confident that we would be able to find many air potatoes very easily since we had been told that they were all over the park. My dear companion and I soon discovered that this was not the case. We had been scanning the trail side and couldn't find any. It was becoming increasingly frustrating. Then, we saw one of our fellow missionaries on his knees, sifting through the brush and finding numerous air potatoes in various sizes. Some as small as my pinky nail, others about the size of a baby's head. We followed the example of this elder and got down on our knees. As we sifted through the brush, we could feel many of these smaller air potatoes and soon had gathered a good sackful of air potatoes. Some of them were deeply rooted and we had to dig deep and pull with all our might to dislodge these stubbornly populous air potatoes. We did get a couple of scrapes from the experience but we were able to rid the park of a good number of these infectious air potatoes.

Now to repeat the question often asked, "what's that got to do with the price of tea in China?" Or in Biblical terms, "what meaneth this parable?" Fear not dear reader, an explanation is at hand.

Sin is like unto the vine, it is something that is not natural with our spiritual nature even though Satan would have us believe that it is something that looks nice and surely will cause us no great harm. It's leaves make a heart shape, it can't be bad right? WRONG! Sin is a weed, it is garbage that has no right to infect our souls yet we invite it in. It is not something that was originally a part of our souls but if we let it in, it becomes infectious and tries to choke out all the good in life. The vines can be torn down, but there's still those air potatoes or habits which will allow the sin/vine to keep coming back.

Many examples have gone on before us and we have the scriptures which helps us understand how to experience true and lasting repentance. It's when we get down on our knees and pray that the real work starts. We are then able to pick up and rid ourselves of our sins in their various sizes as we sift through our undergrowth and weed out the bad. Some sins require some deep digging and more effort than others in order for complete removal. If we are persistent in efforts though, the air potato/sin will come free and we can rid our souls from it's grasp. Sure we'll get some scrapes along the way, but in the end we know that we are better off than we used to be. It's a process that takes a while and takes continual up-keeping but it is well worth the effort we set forth.

Remember, it is never too late to start picking up air potatoes, so get down on your knees, and start working.