For Matthew, faith is never stagnant. If there’s faith, there’s growth: good seed planted in a field, a tiny mustard seed growing into a mighty bush, yeast making the dough rise and turning wheat into wholesome bread.

The kingdom of heaven is like a child accompanying her mother to the mall. As the mother peruses the rack of dresses, the little girl spies a basket of cheap bangles glittering on a low table under the phosphorescent lights.

He told another story. “God’s kingdom is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. That night, while his hired men were asleep, his enemy sowed thistles all through the wheat and slipped away before dawn. When the first green shoots appeared and the grain began to form, the thistles showed up, too.

My wife and I were young and naïve when we bought our first house. We moved into it in early spring, and soon discovered that the woman who owned the house before us had been a wonderful gardener.

Some Americans alive today can still recall the horror of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s paranoid hunt for communist infiltrators in the 1940s and ’50s, which ruined or stalled the careers of dozens of writers and entertainers who were labeled communist sympathizers.

In one of the more affluent suburbs of Chicago, in front of an expensive home, there is a front yard that looks uncared for and virtually abandoned. It has made the news because the new owner has taken out the green, unmowed lawn and let the yard revert back to its natural, prairie state.

We turn to our God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in kindness and faithfulness to us.

Those therefore who wish to . . . inherit the everlasting kingdom of God must not be weeds but wheat. They must avoid saying or doing anything useless, and practice the opposite virtues, thus bringing forth the fruits of repentance.