Issue 1493 – No Roller Skating – July 8, 2024
I awoke this morning with an old Roger Miller song playing in my head. No roller skating allowed. My apologies if that becomes your earworm today.
Chances are you have seen photographs or movies of vast herds of American Buffalo stretching across the plains in numbers too great to count. They were hunted to near extinction, and there is little suitable habitat for those that remain. There are some herds in parks and some privately owned herds that raise them as meat animals.
Did you know that neither species of the buffalo is technically a buffalo?
They are technically bison, which is a vastly different species than buffalo. There are two subspecies, the Wood Bison and the Plains Bison, and you can see both close up in Canada’s Elk Island National Park. There are slight color and size variations and a small difference in the shoulder hump.
I find them hard to tell apart unless they are close together, and I can see the differences. If memory serves correctly, these are Plains bison.
In the same way, it is often hard to tell Christians from non-believers. Churches are full of both, and Jesus warns us that they can be hard to tell apart.
He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” Matthew 13:24-30
Many scholars believe the weeds being referred to here (tares in some translations) are a form of darnel. This common weed looks very much like wheat in its early phases. By the time it is big enough to recognize, its roots are intertwined with the wheat.
In due course, the wheat and the tares will be separated.
In the pews and in the pulpit, there are sheep and goats. In the ministry and the masses there are weeds and wheat. We will be surprised when we get to glory, both by who is there and who is not. Fortunately, it is not up to us to sort them out. That is the job of Christ.
Sheep and goats or wheat and tares, we are called to love them. We cannot judge fully anyone else’s salvation (although fruit or the lack there of is a good indicator), but we can know our own destination. When we surrender to Christ wholeheartedly and follow Him we will sit with the sheep and the wheat. If we reject Him we will be with the goats and weeds.
Until next time, may you rejoice in being a sheep.
Be blessed
Hallelu Yah / Praise God
Kevin
Gleanings From The Word
Experience an extraordinary God in ordinary life.
Soli Deo Gloria (For the glory of God alone)
Never let the enemy tell you that you are worthless or insignificant. Your value in God’s eyes is so great that it was worth dying for. You are a blessing to the world. You are so precious to God that his plan for heaven will not be complete without you.
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Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are from the English Standard Version (ESV)