Wheat And Tares

In the parable of the wheat and the tares a man planted some wheat and in the night an enemy came in and sowed tares among the wheat. The servants of the householder asked if the man wanted them to weed out the tares but the man said to wait until the harvest, lest they accidentally uproot the wheat as well. There are many times in our life that we want to turn over a new leaf, to set some goals and make some serious life improvements and we get out there and we do the work and we plant lots of seeds of faith with an honest and sincere desire to make our lives and the world around us better. But then the enemy comes along and sows all these tares of doubt and laziness and anger and fear. And our first inclination is to zero in on our faults and weaknesses, and we just want to run out into the field and rip up all the tares, never mind the fact that we start trampling all over the barely sprouted seeds of faith that we have planted. Growing a seed of faith requires faith and diligence and effort. But allowing a tare of weakness to grow alongside our plant of faith can require just as much courage and humility and patience. Sometimes it's more important to focus on making sure that our field of faith flourishes, even if its beauty may be marred by the presence of lots of unsightly tares. God gave us our strengths and He gave us our weaknesses and He will reveal unto us when it is the right time to remove those tares from the field. If we are growing a testimony and are beset by doubts, let us focus on making sure the testimony flourishes despite, or perhaps because of, those doubts, and eventually our testimony will be strong enough that the doubts won’t matter. If we are trying to be more kind and yet our hearts fill so often with selfish or angry or petty or judgmental thoughts, then let us still focus on developing the habit and the pattern of kindness, and our kindness will become stronger than our ego or our pride or our anger. Despite all of our best efforts, tares will continue to pop up in our field of faith and we can lose the forest for the trees and burn down the whole field trying to get rid of that one pesky tare, or we can roll up our sleeves and go to work and have our eye single to that glorious harvest, when we will be so laden down with the fruits of the spirit, with the pure love of Christ, that we won’t even remember why we were so bothered by all those tares in the first place.