Alan Watts tells an old Chinese fable about a farmer who loses a horse and his neighbors tell him how unfortunate this is, and the farmer says, “maybe.” The next day the horse brings back seven horse and his neighbors congratulate him on how lucky he is. Again, the farmer says, “maybe.” The next day the farmer’s son falls from one of the horses and breaks his leg and again his neighbors commiserate with him on his misfortune. Again, the farmer says, “Maybe.” The next day, the general comes to conscript young men into the army and the farmer’s son with his broken leg is spared. The point is, it is incredibly difficult to determine what experiences are going to turn out in the long run to be good or bad. Some things that seem good at first end up being bad for us. Some things that seem bad for us at first end up helping us out the most in the long run. And some things are bad in the short run and the long run, just as some things are good all the way through. The Savior tells a parable of the Wheat and the Tares. When wheat and tares are both barely sprouted, it is virtually impossible to tell which is which. We like to flatter ourselves that we can tell the difference right away between the wheat and the tares in our life. Like the servants in the parable, we want to run out to the field and start yanking up every tare we can find. “But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.” (Matthew 13:29-30). We want to believe so badly that if we could only rip up all of the tares, then the wheat in our fields would grow so much more easily and abundantly. We may even believe that if we don’t get the tares out now, then the tares will completely overwhelm the wheat and we’ll end up with nothing. But the tares aren’t going to kill the wheat, just like our own weaknesses and sins and temptations that easily beset us and all of the personal tragedies and failures and heartbreaks and dreams deferred aren’t going to kill us. It is often something that we don’t want to hear to let the wheat and the tares grow together. How can we carry on trying to keep the commandments and live the gospel and hold onto our covenants when so many bad things keep piling up on top of us? Why won’t God just let us yank all of the bad things out of our life in one fell swoop? Mainly because we aren’t the best judges of what is going to be good and what is going to be bad. The beautiful thing about the Atonement of Jesus Christ is that *all* things - the wheat and the tares, the successes and the failures, the pleasure and the pain, the good and the bad - will work together for our good and give us experience. I have no doubt that when we look back for one last time on our mortal journeys, we will be surprised at how many of the things in our lives we were absolutely convinced were tares ended up being wheat in the end, and I know that we will be eternally grateful to our Heavenly Father that He did not permit us to yank out stalks of precious wheat that we had originally mistaken for tares.
