The time of wheat harvest is upon the Palouse here in Eastern Washington. The waving golden fields are being slashed into spikey rows as modern combines gather the grain and nearly effortlessly do the work that once was grueling, back-breaking labor for hundreds of men. The process of getting wheat from field to freight trains bound for bakeries all around the world is a mystery to most of us. But that was not so to the men and women who lived in ancient times. For most of human history, wheat was scythed by hand and carried to threshing floors. There the wheat stalks were flailed and flung high into the wind. The process dropped the precious grain to the ground while the wind carried away the useless outer husks—“chaff.” In other cases, the chaff would be gathered and burned.

If you were a grain of wheat, this process of “winnowing,” as it was called, would be traumatic. You would be beaten, tossed, and dropped. But if you were the chaff, not just trauma, but catastrophe. You and the wheat would be beaten and tossed and flung high. But as the wheat safely dropped to the floor, there you are, alone, to be borne by the wind to a nameless, useless end. The wheat will remain, valuable and useful. It will become food that will nourish and sustain many. You, the chaff, will be lost and utterly useless-flung to oblivion or burned with fire.

Life is harrowing and the current times seem much like a threshing floor experience. We are being beaten, tossed and dropped. The winnowing brings turmoil, trauma. The temptation is strong to become a spiritual chameleon, to blend into the world’s pattern in an effort to avoid the chaos. There is in our fallen human heart the notion that if we just go along with what the world says we won’t have any trouble. Being “righteous” in this context is scary.

But God is at work, separating the evil from the good. As John the Baptist said of Jesus at His baptism: “His winnowing fork is in His hand and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

QUESTION:

Are you wheat or chaff? Have you repented of the sin that separates you from God? Maybe you playing close to the fire, compromising with the world in an effort to avoid the scorn of others? Beware. Both paths are perilous.