Matthew 13:24-30

Wheat and weeds

     I am on a crusade of sorts to let everyone know their innate goodness. I think people need to know that and be reminded of it. I believe that if people had that in their consciousness they might act a little differently all day long. They are a unique and special gift from God. God made a decision that as part of his creation, he needed to create you as a gift to the world, as a special part of His plan for creation.

    That seems pretty awesome to me. If we all felt that way I could see a great many people might be walking around with swelled heads but also people might feel a great sense of responsibility for the gift God has given them. God has given us a great opportunity and we really do need to find out everything we can to bring ourselves to wholeness, to that unique gift to the world that God created.

      Now for the weeds.  I don't know who sows the 'weeds' in us. When you see how damaged and troubled some of us are, it seems a far cry from that beautiful empty canvas that stands before us at birth and Baptism. When I preached at Baptisms I tried to stress that the beautiful child that I held high as a new member of our community is a new canvas. We all will 'paint' on it to try and create the masterpiece that God wants. Somehow though, life intervenes and not always in a good way. 

S**! happens as they say. We all get damaged and broken. The child, we, become masterpieces with some flaws. 

      So as much as we are a beautiful gift from God we need to realize that while we have innate goodness, we also have some flaws. As part of our journey to wholeness we need to try and fix those problems. I don't know what has happened in your life to create those flaws. Some are inflicted on us, others we sadly inflict on ourselves by bad choices and misguided efforts to achieve wholeness and happiness in an artificial way.  So although I like to think we are all wheat growing and glistening in the sun, reaching upward to God in all it's symbolism, we also have some weeds growing in amongst the wheat as well.  The reading would tell us not to yank out the weeds lest we destroy the wheat as well. If we can't yank out our own weeds, le us at least recognize they are there and work on minimizing the bad affect they have on our lives and that journey to wholeness we are on.

       Our journey then is to all be whole wheat?