Patience
Cultivating Kingdom Values - Part 2
Sunday, July 19, 2020
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Let both of them grow together until the harvest…
Matthew 13:30a
My family and I recently moved to a new home in Concord, NC. It’s in a beautiful neighborhood near a safe cul-de-sac where our daughter can ride her bike with the many other kids on the street. In our first week here, however, we received a violation notice from the HOA. We hadn’t even finished unpacking. What could we have possibly done wrong?
The problem was the weeds in our front yard. I’m not even talking about the weeds in the flower bed that can be pulled with relative ease. Someone complained about the patches of white clover growing up in the lawn which had been present for months without being addressed by the rental company. Now it is our responsibility to get rid of them as quickly as possible, which takes months even with a professional lawn service.
In our quick-fix culture, even the weeds must be dealt with immediately. No welcome to the neighborhood or time to unpack and get settled. Just take care of your lawn. Don’t get me wrong. We still love the neighborhood and the neighbors, but some people are just determined to have everything perfect immediately, if not sooner.
Our HOA is a lot like the servants in Jesus’ parable. They saw weeds and wanted them gone immediately. It didn’t matter how they got there, how long it took them to grow, or what circumstances may have prevented them from being rooted out. They just wanted to cut them down, without any consideration for the long process that killing the roots would entail. In the case of the wheat and tares in the parable, it turns out that untangling the roots was utterly impossible until the harvest without destroying the good wheat along with the weeds. In other words, getting rid of the weeds would require an entire season. When we start talking about people, that season may very well become a lifetime.
Odds are the enemy has sown a few weeds in the soil of our hearts. Instead of being so anxious to clear every weed from our sight, maybe we need to pause and give thanks to God for granting us mercy and allowing the good wheat to grow in fullness rather than cutting us off with those weeds before we ever have a chance to bloom.
Listen to this week’s sermon here: