“Gah, will there ever be a day when you aren’t having to humble me? I wearily asked God this week. “Yes” he replied “that will be the day when you are humble” The fact that I laughed out loud at this, I feel shows there has been some progress.
Do you have a perpetual fight with some aspect of yourself that you wish the Lord would just click his mighty fingers and make disappear, you know without the hard lessons and the struggles? I’m reminded of St Paul and his thorn.
We have a field sown with a precious crop in today’s gospel, yet amongst it the enemy has sown Darnel. Darnel in its early stages looks identical to the wheat, it’s tricky to tell them apart, even for an expert farm hand. So you can understand that if the Farmer allows his labourers to pull out the darnel there is a real risk a certain amount of his crop is going to be pulled out with it. But for God, ( the farmer), this isn’t a problem, The God who creates, plants and nurtures His crop would of course know the difference between His own and those potentially poisonous seedlings sown by the enemy. So why would a good God permit any space for enemy sown seedlings in his field, why wait until the harvest? We want them out, they don’t belong there do they? perhaps a subconscious desire to return to that lost perfect garden.
The only answer is that the darnel will serve a purpose that will bring about a better harvest. Perhaps in this field, competition for water will help the wheat put down a deeper root, the less than perfect spacing means a plant that grows higher and straighter to reach the light, perhaps a soil too rich in nutrients will provide fleshy green growth but no fruit… or perhaps He simply could not bare to risk the loss of even one of those He himself planted with such care. The Farmer knows what He is about.
But what of the darnel growing in us ? Those parts of our nature that lead us to think I would be better, holier, more faithful if only…..
If you’ve been guilty of thinking ( and my own hands are up) that the darnel is keeping you from bearing the fruit you’d like for Jesus, perhaps it’s worth looking at why despite your prayers He’s not weeded it out.
Perhaps the battle with your darnel is the very thing that will produce the best fruit in you. The struggle that makes you dig in deeper to Him, the darkness that makes you stretch harder to reach the light, and we know that if we want for nothing we are often in the kingdom, found wanting. Perhaps your darnel is the very thing that will unintentionally produce the best fruit in you, teach you to trust further in the mercy of the Farmer.
Just maybe as the end of days comes you will meet the divine farmer with an abundance of heart, our fruit all the sweeter for the struggle. Perhaps we will stand beside the purgatorial fires watching with joy our darnel bound and being consumed in it.
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