Upheaval

His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. -- Matthew 3:12 (RSV)

For a number of months now, as I've thought about 2020, the word that has come to mind is "upheaval." I didn't know if it would be upheaval on a small, personal scale or a larger, even global scale. There was just that sense of "upheaval."

It's only early March and I've already seen some small upheavals in the lives of some of my family and friends, with unexpected injuries, deaths, etc. Larger scale ones, such as the coronavirus outbreak, appearing to be looming on the horizon. 

A week ago I heard a talk at a Christian meeting about us being in a time of purification. As part of it, the speaker used the quote from the Gospel of Matthew given above and showed a photo of a farmer using a winnowing fork. (I opted to use this illustration from Wikimedia Commons that's in the public domain, but you could easily find a photo of a farmer winnowing grain on the Internet.) He explained that winnowing involved tossing the grain up into the air with a fork or similar tool so that the wind could blow away the chaff and the clean wheat could fall to the ground. It could take multiple tosses of each pile of grain to get it to a place where it was clean enough to use.

I had never really thought much about the process of winnowing--I just knew that it was an ancient harvesting process--but it suddenly occurred to me that winnowing involves exactly what I had been sensing. It involves "heaving up" the grain so that the wind can strip it clean.

With that insight, my perspective on the current and coming upheavals changed. Without realizing it, I had been thinking of them as destructive. But they're really intended to be purifying. God, in His mercy, wants to purify us so that we're ready to stand before Him, whether as individuals at the moment of our deaths or as a world at His second coming.

If wheat had a will, it would be smart for it to cooperate with the winnowing process. Don't cling to the chaff! Cast it off! Let the wind blow it away! The faster the chaff is gone, the faster the upheavals can end! 

Help me, dear Lord, and help Your Church, this nation, and the world to cooperate with Your purifying action in our day. Please do in me and in us all whatever will best accomplish Your merciful purposes to make us ready to stand before You, purified and clothed in Your mercy.