There is a teaching of Jesus
Describing that wheat and tares
Grow side by side. Wheat is good.
Tares have no crop value at all.
The owner sows the wheat.
The enemy sows the tares.
In the end, you separate them.
Only not while they are growing.
Why? This is a crucial question.
If you separate them while they are growing
You may inadvertently ruin the wheat
While trying to get rid of the tares.
Tares are “false grain,” or so the Greek describes
Wheat is the lifeblood of products
Used far and wide in the kingdom
Tares do nothing if you want to survive.
Side by side, good and bad, both grow through the season
The time will come at harvest,
Winnowing is how it’s described,
When separation will happen.
One provides life. The other is worthless.
I never truly understood this until one year
Sometime over the past dozen years or so
We bought an ornamental tree with red berries
Or at least, that’s what we thought.
Through the years, those berries were bright
But something else was growing within
Wait for it… Wait for it… Apples!
Hundreds each year.
Not worth eating, but maybe cooking was okay.
We watched the dogs graze through the branches
Hanging low to the ground, heavy with product
They would pull the apples off, then eat them!
If you will look at the picture for this blog
You’ll find the nesting of tree trunks twisting
Growing. Side by side. Each producing
But only one worth harvesting.
Somewhere, and somehow, those two trees grew.
Side by side and at the same time.
We thought it cute how they intertwined their branches
Until we realized it was from two sources.
Now? We have one that’s worthless for produce.
The other gives more than we can handle.
What do we do? Remember. Wheat and Tares.
Side by side. Let them grow. Their harvest shows their worth.
Matthew 13:24-30 NKJV
Another parable He put forth to them, saying:
“The kingdom of heaven is like a man
who sowed good seed in his field;
but while men slept,
his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat
and went his way.
But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop,
then the tares also appeared.
So the servants of the owner came and said to him,
‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field?
How then does it have tares?’
He said to them,
‘An enemy has done this.’
The servants said to him,
‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’
But he said,
‘No, lest while you gather up the tares
you also uproot the wheat with them.
Let both grow together until the harvest,
and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers,
“First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them,
but gather the wheat into my barn.” ‘ “