Surrounded by weeds

In my Bible, there is a single verse that has been highlighted, underlined, bookmarked, and jotted down more than any other verse. It is not the most popular verse in the Bible. It is not even all that widely known. It isn’t on t-shirts or bumper stickers. Your grandmother probably doesn’t have it cross stitched somewhere in her house. But for me, it is a verse the God has shown to me many times in my relatively short walk.

Last night, trying to reconcile some of the recent news stories with my oldest son, I was at a loss for sound advice. He was troubled by the way the world was reacting with anger and how it was being sensationalized in the media. This morning, I read three verses, and of course, the first one was ol’ faithful:

“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” (Colossians 3:12)

Compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience – these five traits mark the specific areas of my personality that needed the most work when I met Christ. And I am definitely still a work in progress. I cannot help but think that if we would all intentionally focus on these five character traits we would not have the hatred and social injustice that plagues our world.

The news cycle is filled with death, racism, social unrest, violence and hatred. And all that my wife and I could say to our troubled son was that we should pray for them. That we should ask God to touch their hearts and ease their pain. While, I do believe this to be an excellent course of action, it felt like he was looking for more. Not an explanation or advice – but maybe just comfort or confirmation. Just something to let him know that God is here to help us through.
Verse #2 today:

“For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you.” (Isaiah 41:13)

I imagine our son is feeling discouraged, like a lot of us do from time to time. Discouraged because we are obediently walking in faith and doing our part to share the Gospel and bring glory to God. But we are often surrounded by darkness and negativity. How do we remove the bad from our lives? For this God answered with verse #3; the Parable of the Weeds (Matthew 12:24-30).

As hard as it might seem, we have to live with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience – even in a world that doesn’t share our views. We have to lean on God for help. And when we are surrounded by weeds we have to trust that in the end the Harvester will do the sorting.