A Parable for your Sunday Evening Meditation (Based on Luke 17.20-18.8)

Tonight's parable is based on Luke 17.20-18.8

The drifter wandered through the crowded park and curious heads turned his way. He’d become the town phenomenon: a homeless man whom people would willingly feed; whom women were pleased to follow; whom rich men were glad to invite home. And now here he was: grass between his feet, the breeze blowing through his matted hair, and deep-set eyes swallowing the park and its inhabitants. He found a shaded knoll and kneeled to pick a dandelion. Thirty were now surrounding him. Standing up, he looked half-surprised and three-quarters pleased to see the crowd amass. Just then, he blew upon the dandelion, and with his breath flew the breeze carrying each strand of floral fur into the air.

“So shall they be taken away,” he calmly muttered.

“Who?!” came a shout from the crowd, now fifty. He had shattered the calm, but the drifter didn’t seem to mind—

He simply smiled.

Then he spoke again: “Do not lose heart, my friends. The day will come in which the King plucks up the weeds of the field and scatters them to the wind: only the grass will be left, adorned by tulips and lilies… not dandelions. The child plays with the weeds for the excitement they offer, but the woman adores the bouquet for the beauty it shows. How much more a living garden?”

Nonsense, or so it seemed to many. But that was the way the drifter spoke.

“There was a negligent gardener,” he continued, “who had charge of the royal garden. In this garden, a lily had made its home. But so did many weeds. Daily the weeds choked the water from this lily and stole its sun. And the lily cried out with all its meek voice might muster, begging for the gardener to tend justly, but the negligent gardener went about things the way he always had: splashing water over the entirety and never getting his hands dirty. The lily continued to cry out, and the gardener hearing the cries became greatly annoyed. One day he became so disturbed and aggravated that he knelt into soil and pulled the weeds at their roots, leaving the lily to full food and joy.”

Then the drifter whispered, “The pantocrator of earth is no negligent gardener. And yet,” his voice continued to drift, “among the weeds…how many lilies truly live?”

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