The World Through a Wanderer's Eyes
"Let both grow together until the harvest."
It was part of the Gospel reading from Matthew 13, the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds. I have heard those words many times before. I have read the passage during my own reflections and listened to different homilies over the years. It is one of those familiar stories that passes through the mind, but that day was different.
As the priest began his homily, he repeated the Master's reply to the servants who wanted to pull out the weeds immediately.
"No," the Master answered, "because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest."
The priest paused and looked at the congregation, then he asked this question.
"Can any of us honestly say that we are the wheat?"
The church became very quiet. He continued by giving examples from everyday life, citing that there are honest police officers and corrupt ones, government officials who faithfully serve the people and others who abuse the trust given to them. There are devoted parents and parents who struggle to love well, and ther are also compassionate priests and priests who have disappointed many. Good and bad often grow side by side. That is the reality of the world we live in.
Then he said something that lingered with me. These words followed me all the way home, and in my slumber that I have to write it here;
"If we insist on removing every weed ourselves, we may also destroy the wheat that God is still nurturing."
Can any of us really say with certainty that we are the wheat?
Years ago, I probably would have answered that question without much hesitation. But today, I cannot. Life has a way of softening our certainty. I used to looked at the world in simple categories like, there were good people and bad people. Right and wrong seemed easier to recognize. The weeds, I thought, were always someone else.
Then life happened, not just once, it came one season at a time. Seasons that brought unexpected disappointments, while others introduced people I trusted but eventually lost. There were seasons when circumstances stripped away almost everything that gave me confidence. Little by little, life stopped asking me to identify the weeds around me. Instead, it asked me to look at the field within me. That was a much harder question.
I realized that circumstances have a way of revealing parts of ourselves that comfort never could.
It is easy to be patient when nothing tests our patience, easy to be generous when we have more than enough, and so much easier to forgive when no one has deeply hurt us. Character sounds beautiful until life begins asking us to practice it.
Looking back now, I understand why the Master did not allow the servants to separate the wheat from the weeds. At first, they look almost the same. Only time reveals what each truly is. That thought stayed with me for several days, and found myself returning to the image of a field.
When a wheat seed is planted, it does not immediately know what surrounds it. It simply begins growing, its first task is to take root. Only after its roots grow deeper does it begin reaching toward the light. I smiled when that thought came to me. How often have I done the opposite? How many years have I spent trying to understand other people before understanding myself? and how often have I judged someone's journey without knowing the battles hidden beneath the surface?
The older I become, the less interested I am in deciding who the weeds are.
Life has humbled me enough to know that every person is carrying a story I cannot see. Some are still fighting grief. Other are hiding fear behind confidence, and some smile while carrying burdens no one else knows about. And those who appear strong are simply trying to make it through another day.
Then maybe that is why God alone waits until the harvest. He sees what we cannot. He knows the roots hidden beneath the soil, and understands every season of growth, every drought, every storm, and every act of perseverance that no one else notices.
As I continued reflecting on the parable, another realization gently found its way into my thoughts.
The wheat is never told to compete with the weeds. It is never instructed to outgrow them, argue with them, or prove that it belongs in the field. It is simply asked to continue growing. That may be one of the hardest lessons in life because there will always be people who disappoint us.
There will always be circumstances we cannot explain, and seasons that seem unfair. Yet none of those things can decide who we become. They can influence us. They can also wound us, and they can even delay our growth. But they cannot choose our character. That choice remains ours.
The more I stayed with that thought, the more I realized that life had been teaching me this lesson for many years. I just never recognized it.
There was a time when I believed that difficult people were the weeds in my life. When someone disappointed me, I silently wished they would simply disappear from my story. It seemed easier that way. I thought peace would finally come if the weeds were gone.
But life has a way of changing our understanding.
As the years passed, the faces changed, the places changed, even the circumstances changed. Yet the weeds never completely disappeared. They simply appeared in different forms. Sometimes they were people. Sometimes they were failures, and other times they were unexpected losses, or worries that kept me awake at night.
There were seasons when financial struggles seemed to grow faster than hope. There were moments when the future became difficult to imagine because each day was already asking so much from the present. I often found myself asking questions that had no immediate answers.
"Why is this happening?"
"What am I supposed to learn from this?"
The questions stayed while answers, took their time.
Looking back now, I no longer think those seasons were empty. They were simply unfinished. I wanted understanding while I was still walking through them, but understanding has its own pace. It rarely arrives when we ask for it. I remember standing in the middle of those difficult years believing that life had become smaller. Today, I see that it was becoming deeper.
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The struggles I wanted removed were slowly changing the way I looked at people.
They taught me to become less certain and more compassionate. Less interested in judging, and more willing to listen. I began noticing something I had overlooked for most of my life that… every person is carrying something.
The cheerful cashier who greets customers all day may be going home worried about a sick parent. The successful businessman may be fighting fears that no one sees. The elderly woman quietly praying in the last pew may be carrying a loneliness hidden behind her gentle smile. And the young man laughing with his friends may be wondering what direction his life is taking.
We rarely know as we only see the field, but God sees the roots. That thought stayed with me longer. Maybe that is why He asks us to wait until the harvest, because we cannot tell the difference between wheat and weeds.
I smiled to myself as another memory quietly surfaced. When I was younger, I admired trees because of how tall they had become. Now I admire them for something else… their roots.
The deeper the roots, the calmer they stand when strong winds arrive. No one applauds the roots because they remain hidden beneath the ground. Yet everything we admire above the surface depends on what has grown underneath… the foundation.
Life, I realized, works the same way. Our character is built before anyone notices it. The years no one celebrates, choices no one applauds, nor disappointments we endure without becoming bitter. There's forgiveness we offer without anyone asking for it. The hope we continue holding when circumstances suggest of letting go…. these are the roots.
No one sees them growing, yet they become the reason we remain standing.
As I reached home that afternoon, I realized that I had spent too much of my life trying to identify the weeds around me. Who was right or was wrong. Who deserved another chance. Who had hurt me, and who had failed me. Without noticing it, I had been looking across the field far more often than I had been tending the small piece of ground entrusted to me.
Maybe that was the invitation hidden inside the parable all along, to become faithful in cultivating the wheat within us. I do not know who the wheat are. I no longer pretend that I do.
Life has humbled me enough to leave that judgment to God.
What I do know is this: every morning gives me another opportunity to choose kindness over resentment. Patience over anger, understanding over judgment, and hope over despair. Not because those choices are easy, but because they slowly shape the person I am becoming.
The field around me may never be perfect. There will always be weeds, and storms, or seasons when growth seems painfully slow. Yet the presence of weeds has never stopped the wheat from reaching for the light. As I finished writing these reflections, I found myself returning to the priest's words.
"Let both grow together until the harvest."
This time, they sounded less like an instruction and more like an invitation. An invitation to trust that God sees what I cannot. He only asked it to keep growing.
The harvest belongs to God, but the growing belongs to us.
That, I believe, is the real journey. Not the journey of finding a perfect field, but the journey of growing faithfully in an imperfect one. Because not all who wander are lost. Some wander through fields of wheat and weeds until they discover that character is not formed by the absence of adversity, but by choosing to keep growing in its presence.
Maybe that is all any of us are really being asked to do, and not to spend our lives searching for the weeds. Not to worry about the harvest, but keep reaching for the light, one ordinary day at a time.
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About the Author
The Wanderer
The Wanderer believes that every place has a lesson, every stranger carries a story, and every journey leaves us slightly different from the person who began it.
Some wander to understand the world. The fortunate ones wander long enough to understand themselves. Some journeys end at a destination. The meaningful ones end with a different version of ourselves. The world changes us only when we allow it to become a mirror instead of a map.
