Living With Our Weeds

 Matthew 13: 24-30

The Parable of the Weeds

²⁴ He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, ²⁵ but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. ²⁶ So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. ²⁷ And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ ²⁸ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ ²⁹ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. ³⁰ Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”

It seems that the weeds will always be with us, no matter how much we might detest them or work to remove them. The owner of the field knows this and calmly allows them to grow along with the wheat until the end, and then will have them separated and burned. We might take heart at this as we live with our faults and failures which persist day in and day out despite our efforts to eradicate them.  Or, looking beyond ourselves to the daily headlines of woe, injustice and violence, and the feeble ineffective ways of removing them, and just accept that they will always be there.   Our efforts should be centered on cultivating the goodness in ourselves and in others, and living with the weeds which will eventually be bundled up and burned.

Bro. Rene

Bro. Rene