Waiting for the Harvest

Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. (Isaiah 55: 7-8)

Much of the third season of Falling Skies revolves around the strange things that are happening to Tom and Anne’s daughter Lexi as a result of her hybrid alien/human DNA, the most notable of which is the fact that although she is only eighteen months old, she looks like a young adult. In the episode “Door Number Three,” we find Lexi in a cocoon, metamorphosing into who knows what, while the rest of the community debates what to do about her. Many think that she should be destroyed lest she emerge with tremendous power and the ability to destroy or enslave the humans once and for all. Tom tries to be, if not the voice of reason, then the voice of compassion and love. For the sake of his child, he has to convince everyone else not to do anything rash and out of fear. He wants them to wait and see what comes out of the cocoon - there is a chance she might come out completely on the side of the aliens, but they have no way of knowing this for certain.

In Matthew, Jesus tells a parable about a farmer who plants some wheat, but his enemy comes along and sows weeds in the same field among the farmer’s good crop. When both wheat and weeds start sprouting, the farm hands want to pull up the weeds. After all, it would be irresponsible to let the weeds grow along side the wheat, taking the nutrients from the soil that should be going only to the good plants. They want to make a preemptive strike, get out the Roundup, get rid of the potential threat before it has a chance to do something bad.

God, like the farmer in the parable and Tom Mason, says, Stop! Wait! Don’t do something stupid that you can’t reverse! You need to wait for the plants to grow up so you can be sure of the difference between them or you will pull up the good plants along with the weeds. You need to wait for Lexi to come out of the cocoon and find out for sure what has happened to her so you don’t kill her for no good reason.

May we always love people and have compassion for them, never writing them off as irredeemable, never trying to do God’s work for him - only God can tell for certain what a person will become and only he can make the determination of Wheat or Weed.

Wait For Iiiiiit…

They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithinia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. (Acts 16:6-8)

I keep coming back to "The God Complex" from the most recent season of Doctor Who – the longer it simmers in my brain, the more I discover within its many layers and complexities. I decided to revisit the awful hotel one more time because of a recent Sunday School lesson where we studied the scripture passage above.

Throughout the episode, various characters find "their" hotel room and use whatever faith they have to overcome the fearful thing or situation contained within. Doing so eventually alerts the creature, who kills them after feeding on their faith. The situation is summed up by Joe the gambler, whose faith in luck has evidently helped him overcome his fear of ventriloquist dummies because he is now surrounded by an army of them. He tells the Doctor, "I've seen the light. I've lived a blasphemous life but he's forgiven my inconstancy and soon he shall feast."

"But you've been here for two days," replies the Doctor. "What is he waiting for?"

"We weren't ready. We were still raw."

"But now you're what…cooked?"

"If you like. Soon you will be, too. Be patient."

The message that we take away from both TV and the Bible is this: faith is important, but so is timing. Paul was eager to spread the gospel to Asia and Mysia and Bithinia, but God said no, not now. Not yet. In Sunday School, we speculated that perhaps God was waiting for the people there to be ready to receive the message before he sent someone to give it to them. Or perhaps the messengers themselves weren't yet ready. At any rate, we're led to believe that if someone had gone just then, the message wouldn't have taken hold and God's will wouldn't have been done.

God's timing is a great mystery, and sometimes waiting on him to give the "go" for something is exceedingly frustrating. Patience is not an easy thing, but it is necessary because rawness in this case is detrimental to the overall mission. Fortunately, though, if we have the patience and faith to wait for the right time, we are the ones who will feast on the abundant blessings God has in store for us.