Deadly Nightshade

We recently moved into a new home and have found that there is a lot of deadly nightshade in the yard. This is a plant that has berries on it—which apparently are sweet—but if only a few are eaten they can kill an adult.  This is obviously cause for great concern for us with little children in the yard which might get the idea to try to eat a berry.  We were especially motivated to try to get rid of the terrible plant this week when our six-year-old daughter told my wife that the red berries looked just like little tomatoes.  In fact, I looked and the deadly plant is actually in the tomato family Solanaceae which is rather disturbing if you ask me.  So my wife and I spent some time this evening combing the yard and trying to get it out everywhere we could see it.  It likely will take much more work to completely eradicate it from our yard. 

                As we were working on pulling this poison out of our yard I couldn’t help but think about the analogy to the gospel.  We never would have even known that the plant was dangerous had it not been for someone in our previous home who had pointed it out.  How could we have guessed that a pretty plant with nice flower and red berries could be so injurious?  As the Ethiopian would say, “How can I, except some man should guide me?” (Acts 8:31)  Likewise I think there are temptations of the adversary in this life that we might never know were terrible traps if we didn’t have the voice of the prophets to teach us that which we should avoid.  Prophets see further than we can see, and if we will have the faith to heed their warnings we will surely be spared some of the misery that we might bring upon ourselves for falling victim to the adversary’s forms of “deadly nightshade.”  Looking back it is I think easy to see this as we consider numerous examples ranging from the warnings of Noah who “called upon the children of men that they should repent” to the message to “flee into the mountains” out of Jerusalem to avoid the unimaginable suffering of the Jews in 70 AD to the prophetic counsel in our day to avoid alcohol and tobacco before those were known to be harmful (Moses 8:20, JSM 1:13).  But looking forward it is much harder to have faith in what the prophets tell us in our day as the world mocks them and cries out against the standards of morality that the prophets teach.  If we are to avoid, though, the noxious weeds that look like that which is good, we must trust in prophetic counsel even when we don’t understand why.  The Lord may not always tell us all the reasons for His counsel and that’s where we must exercise our faith. 

                There is one story from the Savior in the New Testament that is about weeds which I think is instructive.  In the parable of the wheat and the tares, the two plants were mixed in with each other and, according to the Bible Dictionary, tares were “a grass or poisonous weed that is similar in appearance to wheat.”  It can be hard for us to distinguish the good from the bad at times, so much so that the adversary may “if possible… deceive the very elect” (JSM 1:22).  Our safety lies in trusting the watchmen who are set upon the walls and who “shall never hold their peace day nor night” (Isaiah 62:6).  Their words are literally always available with the click of a button as Isaiah prophesied—do we have the faith to heed them?