Today's Thoughts...

Today’s Thoughts: Today’s gospel is about a farmer who sows wheat in his field and at night his enemy sows weeds in the same field so when the plants sprout there are weeds among the wheat. When the workers ask the farmer about removing the weeds, he tells them pulling the weeds could pull up the wheat so wait until harvest when they can be separated without losing the wheat.
 
We might say that in this parable we are the wheat that God has sown, but there are weeds among the wheat. People that choose a different path. God will not pull the weeds from life because God has given everyone free will.  God provides the love and support that we need, but it is up to us to choose to nourish our relationship with God so it becomes strong and crowds out what might make us become weeds.
 
Perhaps looked at another way, the point of this parable is that the farmer allows the wheat and the weeds to grow together to maturity, which is just what God does for us.
 
In the four Gospels Jesus tells us in many different ways that we have to choose between living joyfully with God forever and being forever separated from God, in great pain over our loss.  This is not a new message.
 
The special spin that Jesus puts on this question of our choice here is that we have a whole lifetime to make it in.  God provides us with all that we need to make a choice and to make the choice concrete in our life rather than just a vague wish or orientation, and we need to make this one central choice of life in terms of the small daily choices that inch us closer to God or away from God.
 
One other aspect here is that while the "harvesters" are able to tell the difference between the weeds and the wheat, we often remain in some uncertainly about whether we truly have chosen God enough, whether we have loved God enough.  Any certainty about whether we are "saved" or not can be a form of self-delusion and lead to pride, laziness, and a fatal assumption that we are "good enough."  This can be deadly in our human relationships, and it is no different in our relationship with God. 
 
We simply do not know whether we are weed or wheat while we are alive, and the fact is that we are both --- but which is the dominant side of who we are?  While we are responsible for the choice, it is up to God to decide what we have actually chosen.  And that is where the virtue of hope comes in.
 
Have a great Saturday everyone!