Up in Smoke

SCRIPTURE: Matthew 13:28-30 NLT “An enemy has done this!” the farmer exclaimed. “Should we pull out the weeds?” they asked. “No,” he replied, “you’ll uproot the wheat if you do. Let both grow together until the harvest. Then I will tell the harvesters to sort out the weeds, tie them into bundles, and burn them, and to put the wheat in the barn.”

THOUGHT: Just a final thought for this little series on Jesus’ parable of the farmer and the enemy who sows weed seed in his fields: all those weeds are going up in smoke someday. Later in the passage, when Jesus explains the parable to the disciples, he says, “the Son of Man will send his angels, and they will remove from his Kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil (v. 41).” So, on the one hand, what a relief that in the Kingdom of God everything that trips us up here is removed. I cannot wait to know what it feels like to be completely pure. No mixed motives, no ambivalence, no second guessing or hedging bets, no more hyper-vigilance trying to keep all the balls in the air! Just shalom in heart and mind and body.

On the other hand, during his three-year public ministry, Jesus talked about evil as an entity and hell as an actual location 87 times across all four gospels: in Matthew 32 times, Mark 15 times, Luke 25 times, and John 15 times. So, for those who make evil a way of life there won’t be any relief in sight. Whatever they’ve imagined as they’ve made their choices – that death is the end of everything, that they’ll be reincarnated, that God is weak or couldn’t have really created a place called hell – sadly, the truth will break their hearts. Until then, it’s breaking ours to watch them.

PRAYER: We don’t know the day or hour, oh God, but we do know that your heart has been breaking far longer than ours over the fate of those who hate you and what you stand for. You delay out of love, but the day will come when the waiting is done and the crops are gathered and separated from the weeds. Break our hearts for what breaks yours. Give us words for those who need to hear these truths, oh God.