Appointed Times and Dandelions
Do not despise the weeds, I heard the Spirit whisper to me as I lay in bed one night, back aching after having spent hours removing, one by one, the dandelions that polka-dotted my grass like bright yellow acne. That night, recurrent images of taproot extraction replaced my proverbial counting of sheep. The next day, I headed outside to eradicate more basal leaf clusters, all of them incubators of an impetuous golden lawn rash. And then a minor revelation struck me: I could eat these leaves. In fact, had I not poisoned (clearly, in vain) my yard with a pesticide a month earlier, I could have enjoyed my own immediate massive crop of salad greens, just outside my door.
Curiosity replaced contempt. Turns out that dandelions are a nutritionist’s dream, revered for their medicinal properties and for providing vitamins and minerals that aid in healing cancer, skin, liver, and digestive ailments.
Nevertheless, I sometimes still find myself battling dandelions on my property. I’d prefer they stay in a designated field, with neat boundaries around their boisterous existence. Their unruliness mirrors my fractious ego. My honoring of dandelions as a gift contradicts my conditioning about weeds and life in general. When is plant life to be nurtured? When is it to be tamed? Does the difference in my view of the life that emerges from fertile soil and mucky dirt lie primarily in the eye of the beholder?
All this weedy contemplation wends me toward a deeper theological wrestling. How do I reconcile Jesus’s use of violent imagery with the nature of a peaceful and loving God? What of the weeds mentioned in Matthew 13:24–43—the ones to be uprooted, bundled, and set aside for burning? It’s all so unsettling.
I ponder the portrayal of God’s appointed time in the parable of the Wheat and the Tares. Kairos, the Greek word used in the parable, speaks to the right or opportune time, which is different from our usual sense of the time of chronos, the Greek word for chronology and clocks. Apparently, the time for God to distinguish between God-sown wheat and enemy-sown tares comes only at the end of people’s growing season (kairos) on earth, after all seeds have fully matured. Perhaps kairos, a postponement of judgment until the harvest, is the figurative point of Jesus’s story?
Meanwhile, we need not be afraid of weeds today. Indeed, Jesus insists on our not rushing to tell the difference. Today’s weed may appear in tomorrow’s feast. He lived, and lives, with a sense of radical hospitality, demonstrating the Father’s heart to water with love all people, unconditionally. “My peace I give to you,” Jesus proclaimed in a world of hostility and love, weeds and wheat, “I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” All my internal preoccupation with weedy vices and wheat-like virtues quiets when I attune myself to the truth of Jesus’s eternal peace that encompasses all fields.
And so, dandelions and their bright yellow blooms have brought me some peace. They may even help renew my soul on a dark day. Dandelions remind me to distinguish between judgments I might make based on fear, shame, or wisdom—and to prefer the latter. What situations, traits, or weaknesses do I rashly label as “weeds,” attempting to pluck them out by the root instead of resting, experimenting, and growing with them to accomplish redemptive purposes for me? How does my ego lead me to judge others (I, too, am an “other” to all others), blinding me to the peace Jesus gave his life for and for which he currently intercedes? How can I trust in God’s appointed times so I can freely tend and receive the nutritive, beautiful, restorative qualities of the “weeds” of my soul and life? In the end, I doubt I will ever fully shake the sense that some weeds really are weeds and some grow out of bounds. Matthew 13 also applies: Surely that sense of order, framed through the good intent of the sower, also has its uses. I now see my lawn and my world a bit differently. I see God’s grace at work according to his appointed times and seasons. And in every golden-crested dandelion, I see a reminder that his grace fills our lives in the meantime.
“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” —2 Corinthians 12:9
Lenée Fuelling is a Writer and Managing Editor for Multiply Goodness. Over the past several years, she has envisioned and helped facilitate women's interfaith events that create safe space for connection with the Divine and each other.
Art by Cuno Amiet.