Observation: As Jesus tells his parables, this one about the wheat and the thistles becomes obvious. The Lord planted good seed, but the enemy infected it with weeds. When discovered, one option was to pull the weeds, potentially damaging the wheat or at least causing some wheat to be pulled due to an inability to tell the difference at first. The Lord decides to let them all grow together, then at the harvest he will separate them and destroy the weeds. Obviously, this is about people and God allowing evil people to exist alongside the good until the time comes when he will judge, sort, and discard the evil.
The motivation of the farmer, the Lord, is interesting. He doesn't want to harm any wheat. He would rather allow the weeds to grow up and mature, treat them just as if they were part of the crop, then sort them out, than to risk harming any head of wheat. His motivation, then, is not to have a perfect-looking field, nor to have the absolutely most plentiful crop. Rather, his motivation is to protect every bit of wheat, and sort out the mess when every growing stock of the harvest can be easily identified.
Application: I want to live in a manner that makes it obvious even to an untrained hand that I am a head of wheat, not a thistle. I want to be nourishing food in God's hand, not a worthless and dead plant to be burned. May I live like I will someday be identified as good by the Lord, even while surrounded by evil today.
Prayer: Lord, I understand the existence of the weeds and thistles, and that you are not inattentive while they all exist among us, even as they seem to choke out the goodness of the harvest field itself. All I wish is to be good wheat in your hands. May I live in that manner, surviving to serve you. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment