Weeds among the wheat

The description of the Kingdom of God in the Gospel of Matthew from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today is an image of weeds growing among wheat. This picture applies to our individual lives as we are people who are living with both movements within our being. We recognize the growth we experience toward greater intimacy with God and we know the easily satisfied tendencies to put ourselves, our addictions and our superior needs first. The “weeds among wheat” is also a picture true in our friends, our family, our organizations and society. We can sometimes fool ourselves like the people addressed by Jeremiah in the passage from the Book of Jeremiah. We need to be aware of the weeds. We will live with the knowledge that they are in our lives and that we can choose to follow the advice of the prophet and do those things which encourage the growth of the wheat. The power of our relationship with God is shown in the ability to separate weeds from wheat and ultimately have the obstacles to our full loving potential removed from our being.