Planting Seeds (Weeds of Faith)

Jolen is an Inhuman.

He has been given the power of plant manipulation.

He was one of the few of the Inhuman super-race to be sent to Earth from their home on the moon to see how well their race could cohabitate with our human-race.  Bent on making sure that their time on Earth sheds a dark light on humanity, Jolen  used his power to cause strife and conflict between his own group of Inhuman "friends" along with the normal humans.


Jolen uses his influence on plants not only on the plants themselves, but also through them. He manipulates those around him. He inspires fear, traps the weak, and constantly has his way. Poison Ivy does the same thing in the DC world.

It's a shame, really, to have the ability to create something and misuse it. Jolen could make the most beautiful plants, bushes, and trees in the world. But, instead he chooses to form spiked weeds and poison plants.

He spends his gift well in planting something, tending it, and watching it grow. But, instead of making a breath-taking flower with the perfect sent in order to form appreciation (for the gift given to him), Jolen spends his time growing gnarly and rough snake-like vines to cause destruction.

In our real world people do this too.

Instead of teaching the beautiful and breath-taking truth of the Gospel, they spread snake-filled lies. They grow their philosophies from the smallest hint of an idea (the seed) to the biggest, ugliest moss-pits imaginable (enormous and fallacious arguments, irrational bantering, and filibustering). This is why we must heed the warning found in Colossians 2: "See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit."

Where the world may wish us to believe that we should be swayed by their slippery vines and hallucinogenic herbs we must remember that we have been given Christ as Lord and we must continue to be "rooted" in him.

Like a precious seed, we have been "buried with him in baptism" which has also "raised" us with him through faith. We have budded and bloomed. From the dry kernel, the Spirit has made us alive and able to grow even more in faith.

It is as 1 Corinthians says. We are God's field. Although some evangelists may have planted or helped water the seed of faith, it is God who is at work. He is the one who is able to let the  truth grow in you and through you.

Although we may be like Jolen or Poison Ivy, spreading falsities, we may learn to become like Paul, spreading the Gospel. God's Law becomes the weed-killer and the Gospel becomes the Miracle Grow. Where once there was just a twisted growth into death, God has taught us to grow into life.

Instead of becoming choked by thorns like the seeds in The Parable of the Sower, we can be the seeds that produced grain. Instead of letting the Jolen's and Ivy's in the world suck up our beliefs and make them whither, we can flourish as God would love to see us do. Instead of being cursed, we may be brought back to life.