Monday, March 7
Scripture: Matthew 13: 31-33

He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” He told them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”

PARABLES OF GROWTH

These two parables are so short and the things they describe are so commonplace you wonder why they count as parables at all. If I offered to tell you a story, then said: “A girl took a piece of bread spread peanut butter and jelly on it and then put on another piece of bread,” you might wonder if I knew what a story was. If I said, “A man got some boards from the store and nailed them together to make a shed where he could keep his lawn mower,” you might wonder if I had a point.

However, there is a point to the two parables, and it can be seen by comparing them with the stories I just told. My stories tell how people make things; the parables tell how God makes things—or more precisely, how God makes things bigger. When people want to make something bigger, they pile more things on top; they smear or cake more stuff on the surface; they fasten things on the outside with nails, or glue, or string. When God wants to make something bigger, he doesn’t do it from the outside but from the inside. Bread swells, or rises; yeast buds, multiplies, or mushrooms; plants sprout, burst forth, bud, blossom, and bloom. Fronds of ferns unfurl from fiddleheads.

This is how it’s been from the beginning. When God made the first living things from nothing, he also arranged the way living things from then on would be made: from seeds. Every living thing we see started out as microscopic dot that got bigger from the inside.  Although this is commonplace, it’s also amazing—mainly because we can’t make it happen ourselves. The miraculous way God brings all living things to their proper size can be summed up in one word: growth.

The point of the two parables is that God will expand his kingdom the same way he expands every other living thing: he’s going to take something tiny and grow it from the inside out. Jesus, like a poet, or a painter, uses images to open our eyes to the reality of growth.

Postscript: In this season of Lent, one other parable of growth and fruitfulness seems fitting (John 12:24): “Unless a grain of wheat falls in the ground and dies….”

PRAYER

Father, open our eyes to see what you are growing in us and around us. Help us not to overlook the small beginnings, seeds that not only have the potential to grow to maturity but to become blessings, like trees where birds can make their nests. We acknowledge whatever growth and fruitfulness we hope to see in our life, or our church, or our Christian university ultimately depends on the presence and growth of your life-giving word. We remember that “neither he who plants, nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” Help us to break up the fallow ground, clear the rocks, uproot the weeds and thorns, prune the fruitless branches, channel the water, and make sure nothing blocks the sunshine of your presence.  We look to you to give the growth.
Amen.

Joe Henderson, Assistant Professor of Torrey Honors Institute