The Hidden Life of Wheat

{The following eschatological reflection is based on Matthew 13: 24-43, Revelation 14 & 20-21.}

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS LIKE…

… a man, the Son of Man, who sowed good seed in a field. The field is the world.

While asleep an enemy sowed weeds among the wheat and left. The man allowed them to grow together. He specifically commanded not to pull up the weeds as they could pull up the roots of the young wheat. Timing matters. 

At harvest, the end of the age, angels will come to collect the weeds and the evil that causes sin along with those who do evil. They will throw them into fire where weeping and gnashing of teeth reign. The righteous wheat will shine in the Kingdom of their Father. 

The message in these passages is more like a warning: Those who have ears let them hear. 

To miss the message, to not hear the meaning, is to be banished. No longer left to flourish under the cover of the righteous Son and refreshment of the Living Water.

The weeds were never hidden though they camouflaged themselves well. The wheat didn’t seem to notice, but the man was fully conscious of their presence, their damage… yet left them.

Hidden things don’t always remain so. Light is good at exposing what is hidden in the shadows and crevices. Like a shepherd knows his sheep, a farmer knows his crop and never mistakes a weed for the fruit. 

THE TIME OF HARVEST IS LIKE…

… angels with sickles come to reap all that’s been sown. The ominous reapers come fiercely glorious unlike the black- wraithly image of Hades of which we’ve grown accustomed. 

Earth will reach its time of ripening and when it does, angels will swing their sharpened blades with definitive swiftness. Together weed and wheat will fall stalk upon stem. Then the final division will commence. An angel in charge of fire will gather and bundle the weed and waste as fuel for the fire. The beginning of wrath; another name for justice. 

Time for repentance, of reckoning, or amending with the man has ended. The continual refusal of his care is given response. Eternal life and nourishment under the man’s tender gaze ceases. Both weed and wheat enjoyed it all, but only wheat knew the man’s voice and enjoyed his care. All the while, the weed hid and stole under the cover of wheat refusing to be seen and accept face-to-face their state of need.

Thus, no weed-born name was written in the book of life, for the man never knew the weed in a personal way. All offers of forgiveness and mercy were off the table. Only a promised second death awaits. A lake of eternal fire. No more will the warmth of sun, cool breezes, or the refreshment of Spring rains soothe the parched. Those who are cowards, unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, practice magic arts, idolators, liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. The second death. 

The end of evil. 

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AM I WHEAT OR WEED?

It’s often hard to tell what I am. There are parts of me I keep hidden and think go unnoticed. How did I grow this way? Among the field of wheat and weeds it’s hard to decipher which is which and who is doing it right. The weeds grow a little different. They hide beneath me and curl around my stalk while absorbing nutrients beneath the soil to feed their sneaking existence. I’ve tried to do the same, but it doesn’t feel natural, yet some of me grows together symbiotically with the weed, a sense of consolation. That relationship makes me feel invisible, but in truth, the man sees me. I recognize his noticing through the warmth of the sun, the gentle rains, the fertilizing with rich soil. He feeds us. Watches us. Makes sure we thrive.

As I grow, some days I notice my existence depends on the tender, other days I believe the weeds are my support. I only think that I am wheat by way of the man who planted me, the seed in which I sprouted proclaims I am wheat, but that feels fairy tale. When I look out at my neighbor the weed I sense I am looking at me. I see them and think I am the same, so I mimic. I can often tell no difference for my fellow wheat do as I do.

We grow up together in the same field under the same carer and all I can do is trust and grow each day and by some hope remember by whom I was planted and what I was planted to be: wheat. 

THE DAY OF THRESHING COMES

His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear his threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

Matthew 3:12 (NASB, the second coming)

The angels with the scythes come and I am thrashed to the ground along with all others from the field. While the weeds are being gathered, I remain on the threshing floor.

I do not know who planted the weeds. Though all the while the man allowed them to be tenants, but today he declares they do not belong. All this time they took what was never theirs to receive. They pretended to be like me, but they were not. Their behavior often betrayed me and caused me to grow in ways not natural. They tried to take my place, but the man knew the difference, he was never deceived, yet allowed this deception. He treated all of us growing here the same. Together we grew, lived, endured the same trials of each season until harvest. I do not understand the meaning of this. In this moment I recall the man once saying, “An enemy has planted weeds in my field, we can’t pull them up for it will uproot my wheat. We must wait till the time is right.”

EYES THAT SEE

The day of threshing changed my life. Suddenly I could see what seemed hidden. I saw the weeds for what they were; intruders, and I saw myself; belonging. I began to remember my real substance with new clarity, no hiddenness, no confusion.

Threshing day was my awakening to the hidden, false, mimicking parts of me that the angel’s painfully severed from my core being. All that was left of me was the sum of my whole; a kernel of wheat now fallen to the ground. The angel’s scythe didn’t slow. Above me it continually swept back and forth swooshing wildly until the field laid bare.

What’s been divided has now been made clear. I’ve been spared. My weed neighbors along with my weed-mimicking remnants were gathered, bundled, and tethered. The angels grasped each bundle tossing them into a lake of fire. As the old parts of me burned away, memories choked out by lies were restored. I watched as the flames curled their tongues around my chaff and former neighbors. With each bundle the hissing and sizzling grew louder and burned with increasing ferocity and hunger, a frightening insatiable wanting. 

With eyes to see, I notice myself laying helplessly among the remains. No stalk to hold me fast, I am but a singular kernel scattered amongst many along the threshing floor. In the distance, a recognizable voice speaks among the ash and smog and I hear, “Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”  This must be death.

As those ancient words reverberated across space and time, I felt the caress of calloused and pierced hands scooping those of us left into one; fellow fallen grains whom I’d never noticed in the fields, but in this moment felt like old friends. As vast as the rain that touched our leaves and trickled to our roots whilst in the fields, we were more than one could count. 

I heard no words yet discerned a Word hovering over us, “I have known you since the beginning of time. Before you were born I have set you apart. I myself will gather my remnant. I will surely gather all of you.” 

I was being gathered. Not only me, all of us. The hands were those of the Man, all this time, it was him. He’s saying to us, “I’ve always known you,” and in this moment I know him. I cry out and my voice mingles with every grain, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”

A single kernel laid to waste now garnered into one. He’s says to us, “I am making everything new!”

“He has blinded their eyes
    and hardened their hearts,
so they can neither see with their eyes,
    nor understand with their hearts,
    nor turn—and I would heal them.” 

John 12:40

For those who faithfully read Along the Wandering Way, thank you. It is a labor of love and one I haven’t had much time to do since being in school. I hope to be more committed in 2023. If this blog has been an encouragement to you, would you be willing to share it with a friend? I’d love to have more people join me along the way in the New Year. I’d also appreciate feedback from you. What do you find helpful or what would you like me to write about?

Please leave your ideas in the comments.

Not all those who wander are lost;
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Riddle of Strider, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring