Of Roots and Fruits

Greetings, Sisters, Brothers and Friends of the Community!

God’s joy for us is hard to capture in words. But He does so love the world that He came to us in the flesh to teach, heal, redeem and offer salvation. In fact, it is my belief that Luke 3:6 reflects this love very well: “And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” There is much support for the idea that He will one day bring home ALL His children – whoever they are.

This seems to fly in the face of teachings that at some point people will be divided into “saved” and “condemned.” Even the readings for this past Sunday (Luke 3:7-18) seem to suggest this, especially as we read starting in verse 17, “His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

So, which is it? Will all of His children be somehow brought back into His grace in some way, or will some be saved (wheat) and others eternally damned (chaff)?

The loving, compassionate, merciful God I have come to know personally is also more clever than we are. If He was able to design and build this entire universe, then He should also be able to figure out a way to bring us all home.

Let’s look closer at verse 17 again. It is important to note that wheat and chaff come from the SAME plant. They are not two separate plants, one good and one bad. They are two parts of the same plant; part good and part not-so-good. Isn’t that like each of us? I know that part of me is good (the true, soul-part that God gave me through His breath of life), and part of me is not-so-good (the dysfunctional ego part).

Perhaps the true message we should consider is that at some point God will put us through a threshing experience to remove the chaff from our souls. Perhaps He wants to recover the part that He made, bring it back home to His arms. The wheat part of us will return to Him, having been made better by our earthly experience, and the chaff part will be removed and destroyed. This process may not be totally pain-free as the realizations of the love opportunities we may have missed in our earthly life come to light. Perhaps it will be a mixture of sorrow and joy. Perhaps for some it will take quite a bit of time.

Perhaps what we do now to reduce the hold our chaff has on our souls may lighten the threshing experience later. That is why we need to learn more about God’s love and joy for all His children, and that we are, in fact, all His children and He is Our Father.

Please reflect on this and let me know your thoughts,

Your Chaffy Brother,

Br. Daniel-Joseph, CTG
Guardian