“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest.’” (Matthew 13:28-30) In His parable of the wheat and the weeds, Jesus makes it clear that the intermixing …
The Soils: our hearts in relation to the seed of kingdom of heaven
"As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they …
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The Seed: receiving the message of the kingdom of heaven
"Then he told them many things in parables, saying: 'A farmer went out to sow his seed.'" (Matthew 13:3) Jesus' parable of the sower and the soils begins with the farmer sowing his seed into the soils around. There is a wondrous extravagance, even an open-handed wildness, to the way the farmer sows the seed. …
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The Inside-Out of the Spiritual Life
"He [Jesus] went on: 'What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.'" (Mark 7:20-23) Responding to the …
What is the Unforgivable Sin?
I can remember so many times I have been hurt by others and others have been hurt by me. This is, unfortunately, part of what it means to be human. One of the great gifts of our humanity one with another is to forgive each other. I often say when officiating weddings that two of …
Matthew Erickson 