The wheat, the weeds, and the willingness

It probably hasn’t taken you all long to figure out that my reading/writing skills are 0 to none. I have never been a reader, for as long as I can remember – I’ve never liked to read. I hated reading so much, I was punished by it as a teenager. (i’m being serious) Andy grounded me once & took my phone. He told me once I finished reading Lord of the Rings and wrote a book report on it, he would give me my phone back. (still not sure how I got out of that one. i’m sure my mom got tired of me whining and told him a 500 page book about a dragon wasn’t gonna teach me why I shouldn’t lie to my parents.)

I used that “I suck at reading comprehension” for a LONG time when it came to me reading my bible and understanding God’s word.

I now realize that, “I don’t understand the bible” is not an excuse for not knowing God – it also didn’t cure my hunger for His word. I still don’t understand a lot of it on my own. I am constantly looking up words/cross references/explanations. Katie introduced me to the BLB app and it has been my best friend since.

Today it helped me break down Matthew 13. When Jesus was speaking the parable of weeds.

My first question was, “okay. what is a parable? i’ve seen this word a million times but what does it mean?”

a parable is a story used to illustrate a spiritual lesson. earthly experiences to represent a spiritual idea. Jesus spoke in parables a lot – and it wasn’t by coincidence. He did it on purpose to hide the truth from those who were not willing to listen. The purpose of parables was to conceal the truth from those to lazy to understand it or too blinded by prejudice to see it.

Yes understanding the bible is hard. It’s meant to be hard – being a christian is hard. We were never told it would be easy, only that it would be worth it.

Insert said parable.

The parable of the weeds: Matthew 13:24-30

A farmer planted seeds of wheat in his field, but while he slept the enemy came and planted weeds around them – so when the farmer came to tear the weeds out, the roots of the good seeds would be destroyed with it – leaving nothing salvageable. But the good farmer knew this. So he told his servants to leave the weeds to grow with the wheat, but come harvest time the weeds would be separated from the wheat and burned in the furnace.

Beyond the surface of a story about an unfortunate farming situation, there is representation of our mortal lives.

The earth is the field.

God is the farmer.

We are the the wheat.

The corruption is the weeds.

The furnace is hell.

We live and grow amongst evil and corruption everyday. But God says we are worthy of salvaging. He lets us live and transpire fully into the version of ourselves we were put here to become – not allowing the evil that surrounds us to take us out and deprive us of serving our purpose.

It’s so easy to get tangled in the weeds that evil throws into our field of wheat. Stay faithful to the God who endures the pain of watching evil grow and multiply in a place He created to be good and holy for the sake of our eternal souls.

The very thing that we need to thrive in a field full of evil put there to tear us apart, is the bible.

But more than it is the bible, it is your determination to know the bible.

How bad you want you want a relationship with God.

How much you strive to be like Jesus – who conquered the grave, despite all the evil He lived amongst, He lives.