Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Today’s text

Matthew 13:24-30

He put another parable before them, 'The kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everybody was asleep his enemy came, sowed darnel all among the wheat, and made off. When the new wheat sprouted and ripened, then the darnel appeared as well. The owner's laborers went to him and said, "Sir, was it not good seed that you sowed in your field? If so, where does the darnel come from?" He said to them, "Some enemy has done this." And the laborers said, "Do you want us to go and weed it out?" But he said, "No, because when you weed out the darnel you might pull up the wheat with it. Let them both grow till the harvest; and at harvest time I shall say to the reapers: First collect the darnel and tie it in bundles to be burnt, then gather the wheat into my barn." '

Reflection

What quickly impresses me is the unperturbed response of the farmer to weeds in his fields. No startled exclamation or condemnation springs to his lips. He accepts the news as a matter of course. These things happen, and the best we can do is to wait and continue on without worry.

Who or what has disfigured the field is of no concern. He points no fingers and wastes no time trying to find or destroy the source of contagion.

The weeds will disfigure the field for now, getting in the way of the wheat. But the seed will produce its goodness in its time.

This is how it is, and it’s best to accept what is--evil and good, beauty and ugliness, love and hate, care and apathy inseparably mixed--as opposed to declaring war on the weeds, lest your violence destroy what is good.

Our job is not to root out evil, as if we could. Would to God that the makers of our nation’s foreign policy better recognized this, fewer innocents would get killed.

The same is true of too much Western Christianity, which historically (and especially in evangelical circles) has been more concerned with pointing out sin and impurity than with the goodness of the seed God sows everywhere in human hearts, celebrating and nurturing divine beauty in mortal hearts.

Trust is the word that comes to mind. Just trust. Good and evil, beauty, ugliness and all the rest are and will remain inseparably mixed in this world--not to mention in our own hearts.

Ours is not to sort it out, but to see and trust the beauty of God in the midst of it all.

Pr. David L. Miller