Saturday, July 24, 2021

24 July 2021 - not overextending


‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?

Our experience of imperfection in the world tends to make us doubt our master. Is he not good? Not competent? Why are the fields not wheat only, but weeds as well? It might be enough of an explanation in a normal household if the master was asleep. But we know that he sleeps not, nor slumbers, Israel's guard (see Psalm 121:4). How then did the enemy get into the field? If we feel this doubt we should not pretend that we do not feel it but rather acknowledge it so that we may be healed.

His slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

God does not consult us in his governance of the universe. He often acts in ways that are not our ways. If we were running the world we imagine that we would do things differently, and that the results would be better somehow. Though from all the many times we have had 'good ideas' which did not turn out so well we ought to know better, the temptation remains to try to fix things ourselves. 

He replied, ‘No, if you pull up the weeds
you might uproot the wheat along with them.

There are some things that the enemy has done in the field that God does want us to address and correct. He definitely wants to work through us to alleviate suffering and poverty, to instruct the ignorant and spread the good news. But in anything we attempt, even these rightly motivated things, we often attempt to control too much, overextending ourselves into God's prerogatives. When we insist on being in control of that which is beyond our scope and capacity we typically put ourselves and others at risk. We do not merely uproot the weeds we find in our lives and those of others. We end up pulling out entire plants by the roots, and sometimes even uprooting ourselves. This happens when we insist on results that are too perfect. It happens we insist on specific methods just because we ourselves prefer them without regard for the nuance of varied plants we find in the field.

The way to avoid pulling up wheat is the learn to trust the master of the field. He has allowed what he has allowed because he is ultimately capable of handling it, even without any help from us. We must learn to trust that even the apparent presence of the enemy in the field is only allowed because the master himself can bring some greater good from it. If we do not learn to trust all of these apparent weeds are just going to make doubt more likely and peace of heart more elusive.

Let them grow together until harvest;
then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters,
“First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning;
but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”

We can trust the Lord enough to let go of things that we are not meant to control. We can learn to believe that the field is his, and the harvest is his, and nothing can keep him from gathering the wheat into his barn. We can have this trust because he himself desires to give it to us, has already given it to us by the grace of baptism. We must simply realize it and open ourselves to it so that it can have its way in us. If we're having a hard time making this act of surrender, the Eucharist is a perfect place to come for help. In it we experience the depths of the master's love for us, so that we can more and more learn to respond with our whole heart.

Then he took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, saying,
“This is the blood of the covenant
that the LORD has made with you
in accordance with all these words of his.”




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