Jesus tells us the story of the wheat and the tares. A farmer sows wheat into a field, but his enemy comes by night and sows weeds (tares) too. When the plants sprout, the farmer’s servants say, “Master, didn’t you sow wheat? There are tares too.” The farmer says, “It must have been my enemy!” The servants ask if he wants them to root up the tares, but he replies, “No, because you’d uproot some of the wheat too. Leave it all until harvest time, then you can harvest the tares and the wheat separately.”
We are all seeds in the process of becoming full-grown souls. Many philosophers say that the point of hardship is the forging of virtue, that life’s hard journey is about proving, and even creating, our love for God and man. Becoming people ready for the glories of heaven is a process that takes until our last breath. God is our potter, and the point of our justification before him is more the beginning than the end. He shapes us relentlessly into saints. But the opposite is also true: the man who has rejected God spends his life fortifying against the truth, constructing self-defenses and self-justifications. With each act of the selfish or lustful heart, the heart becomes darker still.
But the things that proceed from the mouth come from the heart, and those defile a man. – Matthew 15:18
It is a vicious cycle. When we are done on earth, our deeds and decisions will have crafted to perfection that character that once lay only nascent in our hearts, whether good or evil. Then our true colors will show in the court of the great judge.
Even a child makes himself known by his acts, by whether his conduct is pure and upright. – Proverbs 20:11
We will have become who we are becoming. Our identity will be consumate. When our souls are full-grown, God will judge us and divide good from evil.
Wheat and weeds have no ability to change, to veer off from their inevitable maturation. But the glorious and fearful gift of being human is that, ever since Adam and Eve, we have had the choice to believe what we want, whether God’s word or lies, and consequently to become who we want to be. So, who am I becoming? Who do I want to be? Let me act today toward becoming a full-grown son of the kingdom of God.
Ben Taylor 