Disturbing, Yet Full of Grace

Everyone has asked the question “If God is so good, why does He allow pain and suffering to exist?”

Today’s reading gives us one look at answering part of this multi-faceted question: 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.’ ”

OBSERVATION / APPLICATION

Jesus uses this parable of weeds and wheat to show us humanity. This is disturbing in the sense that here we see two types of people. God sees us and determines/judges whether we are wheat or a weed. One simple way to treat this text is to ask yourself, “Which am I?” It’s too simple of a treatment. There is a deeper understanding of God and the world around us seen in this text.

This text answers some important questions. ‘Why not just get rid of the weeds? Why are there weeds in the first place?’

When the weeds are young they look too much like the wheat, so uprooting them is not an option. On the other hand, when they are fully grown they are too intertwined with the wheat that to remove the weeds at that time would mean that the wheat too would be lost. So, the response is wait until the time of ‘harvest’. In this case the day of judgement. Disturbing, right?

This passage shows us that God will not purge evil, otherwise hurting the ‘good’ in a considerable way.

Think about it like this…

We are all a little bad. Right? Admit it. We’ve all ‘sinned’. We’ve all possibly lied, or taken when we shouldn’t have, held a grudge, and the list can keep going. We are all a little bad.

If God were to purge ALL evil from this world, He’d have to get rid of us all. Yet, God loves you and I dearly!

This offers tremendous HOPE! Not only do we grow in our patience as we love and wait till the ‘day of harvest’. We also get to see from God’s vantage point… somewhat.  We get to see what He sees, and love what He loves and be on Mission in the same vein of Jesus. We can also see how amazingly Good God is verses, how evil evil can be… not only in us but as a whole [this helps answer the question ‘Why are there weeds in the first place?’ — there are other ways to answer this: freedom of will, God didn’t create pre-programmed puppets that say ‘I love you God’, thus the option not to love Him and to  love self which quickly leads to greed and inward focused living – evil].

Most importantly we see how amazing God’s Grace really is… He is patient and waits and works and woos and relentlessly loves us! Helping us want to love Him and those around us, helping us weed the gardens of our heart.

He does that by sending us the Holy Spirit to work in us, guiding us and leading us.  Let’s be open to Him!

PRAYER

Jesus, help me to always be thankful for your goodness, to be attentive to your Spirit and to be sensitive to His leading. Give us strength to live by Your Word. Help us to honor You in all we say, think and do! Amen.