Have you ever wondered why God allows certain things to happen? Or maybe instead of the 'why' question you wonder how people can believe in God when there is so much suffering in the world. Good things happen to bad people - bad things happen to good people.
This week we're looking at the parable of the weeds in Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43. A man sows good seed, but an enemy comes along and sows weeds, so that when the wheat starts to grow the man's servants notice the weeds. Realising that this is the work of an enemy the man does not get his servants to pull out the weeds - that runs the risk of damaging the wheat. Instead the field is left until the harvest. Then the weeds are pulled out and burned, leaving the wheat to be harvested.
In my front garden I grow a few flowers - marigolds and roses. Flowers are there to look nice. In my back garden I have vegetables (see earlier blogs). Vegetables are not there to look nice - they're there for the harvest, when they will be eaten. As Christians sometimes we think of our life as a flower garden - it should look nice now. But in reality our life is a vegetable patch. Our goal is the harvest.
Life is messy. We live in a world influenced by sin. People have free will, and some do whatever they want no matter who gets hurt in the process. But we have to believe in the bigger picture. The eternal picture. Maybe you're really struggling with something at the moment, wondering why and how God can allow this to be happening to you... There are no easy answers, no answers that make it any less painful ... but remember the vegetable patch! Ask God for the faith to keep on keeping on, to keep on believing, to keep on trusting, to persevere so that when the harvest comes you will 'shine like the sun'.
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