Loving Patience

“‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

He replied, ‘No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them.

Let them grow together until harvest.’”

Matthew 13:28b-30a

We can see that in this world of ours there is evil. Bad things happen. Bad choices are seemingly glorified. We want to see good people thrive and evil people punished for their actions and decisions, but very often we see good people suffer and those who do evil thrive and continue to grow strong. We may be tempted to be the judge and take matters into our own hands. But we must be careful. We are not the judge, for there is only one judge. We are however called to stand up for Truth and to love. To love includes instructing those who are wandering down a wrong path. And this takes a huge amount of patience.

To live in this world, we must always remember who we are and what we are called to do. We must learn to live in the world but never become of it. As long as we live in the world, there will be sin, there will be evil, and we will need to always make a choice. Do we choose to stand up for the Truth or do we succumb to the alluring lies of the world. To live in this world, we must choose to love, even those who hurt us and those who hurt others. We must love them not because we condone their actions, but because our Heavenly Father loves them. We pray that our witness to the Gospel will help them see how much they are loved and so enkindle within their hearts a fire of genuine love and conversion. We cannot judge whether people go to heaven or hell, for that alone is for Christ to do. What we can and must do is do our best to help others and ourselves go to heaven.