Pest plants, pesky people and pesky prayer

The perfume of honeysuckle and rose slides through the air as I walk down to the stable in the early morning. It is so sweet you can taste it as you breathe. As a child, I loved to sip the nectar from the base of the honeysuckle blossom. The hills are punctuated with multiflora rose bushes and along the fence lines, rose and honeysuckle grow wrapped around each other forming an impenetrable barrier. It is sometimes difficult to celebrate the sweetness of these two plants because along with bittersweet, they are the worst pest plants on the farm. Left to their own devices, and with the help of birds, they spread rapidly and grow like kudzu, another pest plant.
Plants are not alone in being pests. People, young and old, can be obnoxious in their peskiness. Aidan, one of our grandsons, wanted us to visit his favorite gelato shop. As soon as we entered, his pesky streak swung into action. “Mama, can I have…Mama, can I have…Mama, can I have…” Remonstrances from his mother to calm down went unheard and unheeded. She yanked him up, went outside and had a “Come to Jesus Meeting’ with him. He re-entered the store a part of polite society once again.
Our young bull, Bully, is being a pest. He is breaking through fences and gates to go to our neighbor’s herd where another young bull resides. So far he has destroyed two gates, knocked down one section of a newly constructed woven wire fence, gone through barbed wire, and jumped flatfooted over a chain link fence like a deer. The young bulls pester each other, butting heads, mounting each other and bawling. Leisa and I suspect they may be in love since we saw Bully licking the other bull’s face. Gay bulls are not unheard of. Bully, however, may be bisexual since he has fathered a full complement of calves this winter. Or, it may just be the scent of one of the cows in Gary’s herd that is in heat. Who knows?
Jesus saw peskiness as a virtue sometimes. The Canaanite women was healed because she talked back to Jesus. Ask, knock, seek…pray without ceasing…make a pest of yourself until God listens. The answers to our prayers may not be what we expect or what we asked for. It may take awhile for the answers to come or we may not be able to see and hear the answers until time has passed. Prayers are always answered by change whether it is the change we asked for or a change we did not know we needed. It might be an inner transformation or an outward sign. Nature’s laws tell us that for every action there is an equal reaction. Prayer, its energy, its peskiness, circles back around and we get a Come to Jesus Meeting with God. Be careful what you pray for. You may get it.