NOTES for Mat 13:24-43
The parable of the weeds tells us about something so hard to follow in daily life. We see that the Lord counsels us to be careful and to refrain from hasty judgment. Yet again and again we feel "like gods, knowing good and evil," passing judgment on human destinies.
It is very easy to cry, "Get the bad grass out of the field," and begin uprooting everything that is bad or that looks bad to us; often it only looks that way and nothing more. And if the owner of the field is afraid that weeding might damage the good grain, such difficulties do not frighten us. More than that, we are ready to trample even half the harvest just to spite the weeds.
At the same time, we do not want to think that what looks like a weed today may turn out tomorrow to be a useful plant. In the world of living nature, of course, such transformations are exceptional; but we live among people, and with people like us changes greater than that can happen.
The weeds, however, are sown not only among those around us, but also in our own hearts. It makes no sense to uproot the weeds around us while leaving untouched the ones growing out of ourselves. In that way we will fail to notice how we become overgrown up to the crown of the head, or even become weeds ourselves.
And now, into the soil where both grain and weeds grow, a nearly invisible seed has been thrown. And strange as it is, the weeds do not manage to choke it, although at first they can cover it, it is so small.
Yet the very thing that looks insignificant often proves to be the most important. For what grows from this seed, when it has become taller than all the trees, will separate the wheat from the weeds.