This is one of the most hopeful and encouraging gospel passages… because we are this garden, so full of weeds and good seeds! Both And! All of the Above!
Sure, we attend church, read the bible, pray regularly, try to be a good person, hold our tongues, go to confession— or some combination thereof. Most of us try to be good and do good, right?
But that devil… whether that be the snarky coworker who brings out the worst in us, or the obstinate customer service representative who refuses to help us out of a self-created jam, or our so-called friend who gossips about us behind our backs… he, she, they… are so omni-present we can’t help but fail to be our better selves from time to time!
And sometimes it seems like these snarky, frustratingly un-understanding, self-promoting weeds are much more prevelent that the good seed trying to poke through. The good seeds– the ones the Lord has planted– lead us to acknowledge someone else’s struggles or difficult circumstance, to say the kind word even if we feel a bit awkward, to give a gift or leave a gift card even if we don’t know how it will be received, or to back someone up at a meeting when they are being dumped on…
These good seeds can really struggle to survive, can’t they!? But these seeds flower into hope, love, joy, peace and we not only need them to interact well with others but, indeed, our very own survival depends on them. If we don’t recognize our own dependence on these spiritual gifts and presences, then we may end up desperately hungry and thirsty for something we are thinking is a ‘nice if you can get it’ as opposed to an ‘as necessary as nitrogen to the air we breathe.’
Now, most of us remember that we need oxygen to survive, but the understated, unassuming hero of the air we breathe is Nitrogen, which composes 79% of the gases in air, while Oxygen makes up 21% of that same molecule of air. Well, these good seeds… hope, love, joy, peace, are as essential and as unrecognized, in terms of their essential role in our survival, as Nitrogen.
And sometimes, our efforts to do the right thing, to say something encouraging, to perform a helpful deed, is just as invisible. However, they are just as radically necessary for survival!
Reflection Questions
- Recall and reflect on a time when someone showed you kindness that really made a difference for good.
- Recount a time when you tried to do ‘the right thing.’ Do you know the consequences? How do you evaluate your own efforts now, as you look back? How did you feel then and how do you feel now about the situation?
Writing to Pray 