It’s spring where I live. Actually it feels like summer. We sort of went right from winter to summer with no spring in between. I live in the forest and it seems like one day my back yard was bare trees and the next it was a jungle, with no spring in between. I was out yesterday with some garden nippers cutting any branch I could reach to make a path through the yard. I can’t see the back of the yard. I feel like the guy in the gospel who sows a seed and the next morning has a big plant. I didn’t even technically sow the seeds but I sure have the big plants. The miracle that is my backyard is sort of overwhelming for me right now, but it’s still a miracle.

God created the world and all the plants. He takes the branch from the Cedar and creates the new tree. Planting a seed makes a new plant whether we do anything else with it or not. My back yard grows from seeds that fall from the trees already there. There are also squirrels that plant seeds and those can grow into new trees. I go to sleep one night and wake up the next morning in a jungle.  Of its own accord, the land yields fruit.

If I were singing Mass today I would sing Dan Schutte’s lovely song “Like Cedars They Shall Stand.” It’s taken from today’s Psalm. How good it is to thank and honor God. And the just people are like cedar trees, upright and fruitful, and rooted in God. The kingdom of God is like the flora. The small seed grows into the large plant. It only takes a speck to grow into something vast. The mustard seed is tiny, but the plant is like a tree. It starts small then blossoms and grows into something amazing, all the people like a forest loving and praising God.