“He put another parable before them saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow seed in your field? How then does it have weeds? 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’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. 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.’” Matthew 13:24-30
When I moved back to IL a little over a year ago, I pulled a ton of weeds both at my home and also at the Bloomington Campus in preparations for opening. What came to my mind as I was pulling these massive farmer type weeds was not the fact that I disliked them so much (well that too) but that sometimes weeds look a lot like something else. We are not quite sure if it’s actually a weed or maybe a wildflower. Depending on the season we are able to determine if it is actually a weed or not. If you love to garden as I do, then you know that weeds tend to kill and choke anything beautiful around it.
Kind of like sin isn’t it?
Jesus explained in this parable of the weeds and the wheat that they were to grow together until the harvest—the season where they can be distinguished from one another—and then the weeds are pulled, bundled, and burned. We live in a world where there are believers of Jesus and non-believers of Jesus, and the enemy knows this all too well and wants nothing more than to “sow weeds among the wheat.” This is where a warning sign appears for us to…BE CAREFUL! Don’t let the sin of this world choke and grab hold of everything that is beautiful in and around you. Pull those weeds, all the way to the root!
Our lives as Christ-followers are to reflect a life measured in the love of Christ, not a life that is identical to a sinful world where Jesus is unrecognizable.
What does your life reflect…weeds or wheat?
Are you ready for the harvest season?