Do you ever feel like you’re in the right place at the right time for no apparent reason? You weren’t purposely meaning to be there or maybe you didn’t want to be there at all. But then when you think back on it, you’re think “Wow there was a reason God put me there at that time.” Last Sunday I felt this way.
I got home late Saturday night and didn’t set an alarm for church like I should have. I thought “I’ll go if I’m up or maybe I’ll go to the evening service.” I ended up waking up at 8:50 and was just laying in my bed thinking there’s no point to get up and get ready for church since I would be late anyways. Then my sister opened my door and said she was leaving in 2 minutes. Usually I would say “Okay. I’ll just watch the message online later.” But for some reason I felt a small nudge to get up quickly, throw on some nice clothes, and hurry out the door.
We snuck in quietly to sit with our parents. After finishing a few worship songs, the message of the day finally started. We had the Pastor from our sister church speaking that today which was different and exciting. He started off reading Matthew 13:24-30 from the Bible which was a parable about a farmer and his crops. He had planned good wheat, but during night, an enemy planted weeds among his wheat. When servants asked if they needed to pull the weeds, the farmer said wait until they are full grown. When harvest time comes, the harvesters will first pick the weeds and wrap them up to burn. Then gather the wheat and bring them my barn.
This confused many people so Jesus later explains this parable in Matthew 13:36-40. He explains the farmer is the Son of Man. The field represents the world. The good seed stands for the people of God’s kingdom. The enemy who planted the weeds is the devil. The weeds are the people of the evil one. The Harvest is the end of age, and the harvesters are angels. This helped clear many people’s minds when understanding this parable. But why would God not want the weeds pulled out right away?
Pastor Aaron had this same question for us. He goes into explain that the servants may have mistaken good wheat for weeds because of how intertwined they were and how similar they could look. He did not want to risk good wheat being uprooted due to a wrong judgement call.
Our Pastor continued on explaining how this was representing God does not want us to focus on judging others when it is His call to make the judgement. When the end of the age comes, we will not be the one to say who lead a right life or not. God will be the judge. So why should we worry on making judgements while still hear on Earth when in the end it won’t even matter?
This really hit me hard. Why do so many people put a ton of energy into judging others when they could be focusing that energy on making themselves better? God does not want us judging others when we clearly have our own room to grow. He wants us to put our energy into being good wheat. Think of how you could grow into a stronger Christian if you put that extra time and energy from ending your judgement into being a better person.
I challenge you all to take time and think about how often you find yourself judging someone else even if it is just as little as that shirt color doesn’t go well with those pants. Think about how often your judgement is incorrect due to not knowing the full story. Over the next week, I challenge you to focus growing your relationship with God instead of focusing on the other people in your life.
With love,
Paige Canova
P.S. Here’s the link to the message if want to listen to it: https://ridgelife.org/message/good-seed/
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