Wisdom 12:13,16-19
Romans 8:18-25
Matthew 13:24-30,36-43
Psalm 86
Home is where the heart is and being anywhere else brings longing. Anyone who has felt homesick knows the terrible ache of longing.
I had a friend. She was strong and caring and attracted others like a magnet. She gave freely of her time and her home.
She found me in a crowd one night like an angel finds a soul in need. Many unwelcome changes had taken place that left me full of pain and in a quandary as to where to go from here. The more I smiled and tried to mingle in the crowd that night, the more those laughing strangers seemed like just props in a one-act play. I needed desperately to belong but I was on the outside looking in.
Jean lived in a quaint cottage she called the "cabin" overlooking the wooded shores of one of our central Minnesota's lakes. The rooms in the cabin were open and inviting. Spacious windows and a sliding glass door opened to a panoramic view of the lake and the scene changed pleasantly from one season to another; it was warmed in the winter by the rising sun and cooled in the summer by pleasant breezes lifted from the lake below. A long wooden table with benches served many people as they passed through Jean's life and I was glad to be one of them.
Well, one warm day, sitting in the shade in my own back yard, Jean and I chatted, and she told me that she had been adopted as a child. I did a double-take looking for a trace of emotion on her face that would tell me how that news impacted her. Was she sad, did she feel abandoned by her birth parents? Did she know nothing about them? Was she angry? Was she happy with her adoptive family?
These questions brought knots to my stomach. What could I say to reassure her if a hole in her heart should open to long-carried hurt or sadness?
I had known of others who had been adopted and some of the stories were not happy ones. There was one who acknowledged happiness with her adoptive parents and yet felt sadness and longing for the biological parents she would never know. I listened to a man who felt abandoned and burned with anger and distrust because he learned of his adoption only by way of a vindictive relative. I know a woman who grew up feeling that she must have been adopted because no real mother or father would treat her so terribly. We've all heard the declaration about the "child that only a mother could love".
Fairy tales like Hansel and Grettel, or Cinderella suggest that adoption is not necessarily a good thing and strangers could have less than loving motives for bringing someone else's child into their homes.
It seemed like hours passed while I searched the possibilities of Jean's adoption but I know it was only a second.
Suddenly Jean's face lit up with a ho-ho-ho type of grin and a glint twinkled in her blue eyes.
"Oh, I felt very special", she said. "I knew my real parents too and I felt like I was better than all the other kids who had only one mother and father - and I had two of each."
Well, I was skeptical for a moment but as she talked on about her experiences with two families, I knew there was nothing to disbelieve. Jean had something that many of us find hard to imagine. She had the assurance that she was loved, and that she belonged. She had not been abandoned by those who should have cared; her parents had not disappeared into some unknown void or died in a tragic accident. Instead she had gained a double measure of love and assurance.
Now Paul, in his letter to the Romans, touched on a greater longing when he wrote, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption…."
We struggle with all the problems and hurts the world has to offer, and the ache of longing to be free of longing. We let go of God's hand while we try to make sense of the world around us, or to shield ourselves from the vulnerability that comes with loving and caring.
We hope patiently from the core of our faith that the bad things and sad things and even our own miserable failings will end and we will know the joy that will come when God fully adopts us as His very own.
But what if God can't find us in the crowd? Like the blades of wheat in Jesus' parable of the weeds, will God recognize us among the weeds that threaten to choke us off before we develop?
Now, a weed is described as any undesired, uncultivated plant that grows profusely so as to crowd out a desired crop. There is a poisonous weed named "darnel", which is often found in grain fields and from the beginning it is difficult to distinguish it from the blades of grain.
In Jesus' parable about the weeds, though it would seem prudent to pull the weeds and burn them first, Jesus advises them otherwise. He tells the farmers not to pull up the weeds until the wheat is ready to be harvested. To pull the weeds too early, they would risk uprooting the wheat at the same time.
Although the weeds threaten to take over the field and choke off the young blades of wheat, in time they will show themselves for what they really are, and the wheat when it reaches maturity will burst forth with life-giving seeds while the weeds show themselves as the noxious plants that they are.
But how long does the wheat have to wait in that environment? How long does a parentless child, a ward of the state, have to wait for someone to come and adopt him? Imagine the disappointment that follows a visit from potential adoptive parents who never return.
There is no marketplace where the child can do his own bidding, and with so many other children waiting for adoption, will he or she ever be noticed in the crowd. Will the farmer be patient and wise and wait for his crop of wheat to mature or will he burn the whole field before he knows the value of the crop?
There is a great Wisdom in God's creation. That wisdom is God himself. God is wisdom, the "wisdom" in which the wheat matures and where His children - you and I - grow with unfolding knowledge that no matter how much we savor the happiness or suffer the pain this world has to offer, God is longing for us as we are longing for God. Will we wait patiently for God's promised adoption? Will we share the excitement with our brothers and sisters? Or will be abandon them to discouragement when they can't see the forest for the trees or the wheat for all the weeds?
I have the dubious talent for being easily distracted but my soul is much wiser than I often give it credit for. It waits patiently to be adopted. My soul waits with excitement. How about your soul - is it excited? Will you share that excitement with your friends today?
Amen