Parable Personal Essay

Kieran Klukas
Carrie Klukas
Writing

I grew up in a small fishing village outside of Tiberias with my three brothers and four sisters. We had a hard life, but it was good, honest work. When I was around fifteen, I heard that Jesus was going to preach within an hour’s walk of our village. My mother gave me two loaves and a fish to eat on my journey which, secretly, I was hoping Jesus would transform into enough food to feed thousands like I had heard about.

It took longer than expected to walk to where Jesus was, as the roads were crowded with people also traveling to see him, but eventually I reached the hill where he was preaching. He told many parables that day, and I didn’t understand all of it. But the story that stuck with me the most was about a farmer who planted wheat in his fields, but the wheat got choked out by darnel. It was such an ordinary thing that the farmers who traded with us always complained about, and yet he had used it to tell us about the kingdom of heaven.

After that day was finished, I traveled home by foot and thought about what he had said. The sky was clear that night, and so on the hour or so walk, significantly shorter now that there weren’t as many people on the roads. I got to observe the beautiful stars that represented my people and think about his parables. In one of his parables, he talked about the weeds and the wheat growing together, but then the weeds were torn out and burned. Some of the people I was walking alongside with told me that he explained the parables afterward to his disciples and that the weeds were those who did not repent. They would be thrown into hell at the end of time on Judgement day and burn in agony. Burning in agony didn’t sound very pleasant to me, and I kept thinking about it for months afterwards as I waited in the cool of the morning for a tug on the net or gutted and sorted the fish.

Eventually I grew up, and one day men came to our village who called themselves “Christians”. They told us that Jesus was the Messiah and that he had died on the cross for our sins. Talking with them, they told us how we could be saved and enter the kingdom of heaven and, thinking back to the day I heard Jesus teach that parable, I became a Christian. Looking back on that time, I truly believe that if I hadn’t walked those hours to see him preach, I would never have become a Christian and I would have been one of the weeds burned on judgement day.