Imagining With God

“Good things come in small packages.”  How many of us learned that phrase as children, often as an encouragement when obvious disappointment accompanied a newly arrived present that seemed not to measure up to our expectations.  This familiar axiom teaches us to look beyond apparent appearances and to use our imaginations to “see” what our eyes may fail to grasp on first notice.

Today Jesus continues teaching by way of parables and offers two images for “how it is” in the Kingdom of God.  The seed that grows though the farmer “knows not how” opens us up to confidence in the amazing power of God at work, especially where we mistakenly accept the burden of responsibility for making the Kingdom of God come.  The mustard seed, “smallest of all the seeds on the earth,” reminds us that, with patience, God can bring about great things. 

The parables draw out from us the importance of confidence in God (not ourselves).  They invite us to expect “great things” from God.  They point to the need for patience all the way around.  Conversely they question us about what we see as “inert” or apparently without God’s presence, where we have diminished our expectations from God and where our impatience makes a deeper “seeing” all but impossible.  May our faith in Jesus’ preaching of the Kingdom of God improve our sight and fire our imaginations to see God powerfully at work in all that is small.