Do the spring and summer months create in you a depth of vitality that autumn and winter cannot create within your being? Me too.
It’s almost as if I’m drawn closer to God in the change of seasons. Each season I’m drawn into His story in different ways — in the fall I’m brought into him as Host when preparing all the autumn flavors and enjoying the glow of lit candles, winter reminds me to rest and surrender to less light. Spring awakens my senses to newness and opportunity, and summer opens the flood gates of creativity. Although we spend time outdoors often throughout the year (even in single digits here in Wisconsin), there is a beautiful difference of waking up to the rising sun, birds singing their morning melody to their Maker and soft dewy grass beneath my feet, it all makes me come alive. I am, indeed, a summer baby, and running barefoot is in my blood, as does my oldest.
Maybe it is our feet being exposed or more sun blanketing our faces, but in our home, all of our souls seem to sing a little louder when the days become longer and the heat decides to stay.
So there I was, plucking weeds out of my garden box, and I felt as if I was brought into the Parable of the Weeds. In Matthew 13, Jesus is explaining what the kingdom of heaven shall be like. He says,
“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'” Matthew 13:24-30.
As I was standing there, feet in the dewy grass, my youngest in my peripheral playing in the mud kitchen, dirt wedging its way underneath my fingernails as I slowly and gently pulled the roots of so many weeds that seemed to spring up over night, I thought if this is what the kingdom of heaven is like, how easy it is to simply let weeds grow because we don’t often know they are there taking root until they spring up. How easy it is to let the world have affect on our character, how easy it is to, dare I say, ignore the sin that entangles us at a root-deep level.
If God lets weeds grow where wheat is planted, how are we protecting and nurturing our children so weeds do not overtake them? Or shall I say, for our kids to know when weeds are trying to overtake them. How are we building our children’s character and teaching them grit to live amidst them?
My husband and I have this analogy we go back to every so often: the atmosphere of our home is a cultivation of good soil and we are intentional about the feast we set before our kids. We want our children to feast upon God’s Word, to read good novels, to know the truth about history and appreciate different cultures. So we cultivate a home overflowing with heroic stories of adventure, we have beautiful artwork on our walls from artists like Claude Monet but also paintings made by tiny hands, we have flowers and candles scattered all throughout the house, we have maps and Bibles, needles and threads, journals and the list goes on. The atmosphere of our home is suitable for all the seeds we are planting in the hearts and minds of our children. And when those seeds take root, even amidst the weeds, we believe the fruit will be plentiful and we will feast.
. . .
The following morning, while the house was still quiet, I grabbed my Bible and opened to Mark 13 where I read Jesus’ warnings about the end of time. He told of wars and families giving members over to death, but then, after a long list of horrid things, he ended with, “But the one who endures to the end will be saved.” And Jesus continued the unveiling of what the end of the world will be like. But I stopped, urged to pray, so I did. I prayed for each one of my children, our small and growing family as a whole, for my husband and our roles to disciple and teach our young ones. I asked God to show us how to pray, how to work within our home, what seeds to sow, and how to stand firm. I was brought back to Matthew 13, how do we stand firm with weeds growing all around us?
In studying about the weeds I learned the bad seed, historically and regionally in the time period Jesus was on the earth, that was sown was most likely darnel, which is a “weedy rye grass with poisonous black seed which resemble wheat.” God allows beautiful, yet bad, things to grow alongside the truly Beautiful thing, or Person, he desires us to know. If God allows it, we mustn’t fear, we can’t really anyway since “God is for us” and because “love casts out all fear.”
In a world littered by weeds — shallow entertainment, flaky leaders, unkept promises and unmet desires, our homes can be the soil where the good seeds are nurtured and thrive. In Jesus’ parable, notice how the enemy goes away, he scatters bad seed and leaves. Maybe out of mischievousness but perhaps out of fear? Demons know Jesus’ name, they know who He is and they shudder. Yes, there are plenty of weeds in our world, but just like the master with his servants, we as parents are older and wiser than our children. Our daily journey with our Master, who never leaves us, creates in our hearts patience and grit and wisdom that we then are capable of passing down to our children when they fret and have questions about what to do in certain situations, when they notice the weeds sprouting up all around them. We then become the master, teaching our children truths about God and who they are as His children.
This parable is about the kingdom of heaven, but if weeds don’t grow in heaven then we must let Jesus’ words take root in our hearts right now because His harvest will be bountiful.
