Seeds and Weeds
I heard the news in Ubon Thailand, during our first Living Waters Training there: 70 years of clerical abuse in Pennsylvania involving 300 priests, over 1000 of God’s beloved kids, and the Church’s systematic attempt to cover her tracks.
I knew the report was coming. Nothing prepped me for its magnitude. Jetlagged and restless at 2am, I read until I could not. In the gray light I recalled the night before when we as a delegation from 9 Asian nations renounced idolatry—our relentless self-preservation: we took a stand against constructing false religious personas that hid a multitude of sins. Beneath our robes, over half of us admitted that we as children had been sacrificed on the altars of adult perversion. Otherwise smiling Asians wept as Jesus washed us with His blood and water.
We gathered before the Cross where Divine Mercy met us in our misery. None of us are noble by human standards, most of us sinned grievously as we staggered into adulthood; all of us know now that Jesus considers us deep rich soil in which the Father of lights is supplanting seeds sown from the father of lies. Rooted in Him, we the weak are becoming strong, saplings destined to become oaks of justice. He is Jesus, after all. He acts as He wills with whom He wants. He chooses the least to shame those most inclined to preserve face and place.
I stammer to answer for churchmen who in decades past (today’s clergy is painfully aware of clerical abuse and mandated to root it out) sacrificed sons and daughters in the fire of lust (2K 17: 17, 31) then concealed their deaths. Predator priests and those who guard them are weeds that choke life and incur judgment. These are demon seeds sown among the good wheat of the Gospel. Jesus describes His Kingdom as nothing less–a harvest-to-be of righteousness challenged by deadly weeds. Jesus permits the mixture in preparation for the time that His angels ‘weed out of the Kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil…’ (Matt. 13:41).
A Grand Jury report pales in contrast to the final judgment of the weeds and vindication of the trampled seeds. In the meantime, we must take seriously these gifts of judgment on God’s house and ask for them to be effective in crushing all vestiges of Christian idolatry.
More importantly, I urge you to invest liberally in sowing and tending to the good seed. And may we who have been crushed by sin and summoned by mercy know who we are! We are nothing less than ‘plantings of the Lord for the display of His splendor’ (IS 61:3), tiny seeds emerging into the tallest, strongest of trees that shall provide food, shelter, and healing for wounded ones (Matt. 13:31, 32).
Thank you my friends. As I fly home now from Ubon, I am reminded that your support of Desert Stream Ministries has sown seed and provided tools of growth for the saints in Thailand, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, Korea, China, Singapore, the Philippines, and India. You free us for the fields. I praise God for you, His gift to the nations.
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