Are you familiar with the story of the wheat and the tares? Wheat is valuable and tares are weeds. The workers volunteered to remove the tares immediately, but the master was concerned that the wheat would be damaged in the process, so they were allowed to grow together and separated at the time of harvest. How eager are you to judge those things that need to be removed and condemned? I’m willing to be patient and allow them to grow side by side. There is another reason for this besides the concern for damage to the growing crop. In the economy of my kingdom tares can become wheat.

Do you have answers for all your questions? Are you uncomfortable having unanswered questions? How eager are you to accept the first answer that comes along to resolve this discomfort? Have you ever accepted an answer that you later found to be wrong because you were too quick to resolve the issue? It is better to have no answer than to be convinced of the wrong answer. Learn to be patient with your questions. You can live with them, and walk with them as friends.

Are you grateful for the blessings I bestow upon you? Can you see my hand in the events of your daily life, and offer thanks? Have you encountered people who object, saying that my intervention in the minor details of your life pales in comparison to the suffering of multitudes and calls into question my goodness and impartiality? There are two issues here. You have not been called to be an arbiter of cosmic justice.

I asked you to follow me, and walking in my footsteps is a matter of imitating my life. If you do this you will start to look like me. So does my image that you present to those who encounter you look like me or you? John the Baptist declared that he must decrease that I might increase. He knew that there was too much of himself present for him to represent me well, but his willingness to decrease made room for a fuller expression of me in him. He who seeks to increase his own life will lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake will find it.