On January 7, my wife gave birth to our third and fourth children: beautiful, healthy twin girls. Spending a couple of nights in the hospital, our room looked out on Route 6 on the outskirts of west Omaha. As I lay awake at night, seeing cars' headlights and taillights passing by, I thought of the momentous nature of what had just transpired. In her womb, my wife carried our daughters for 38 weeks. In her womb, our girls came into being, their bodies developing and preparing for life outside the womb. Together with God, my wife and I had co-created two human beings. We participated in an ongoing Genesis.

Today in Mark, Jesus attempts to help crowds understand the Kingdom of God. Among the two images he uses is the mustard seed, "the smallest of all the seeds on the earth." (Mk 4:31) The Kingdom of God, as Jesus describes it, begins as the smallest of things yet, over time, develops into something far more than anyone would expect considering its humble beginning. Miraculous growth follows the seed that is sown. 

What we hear today in Mark reinforces an image that entered my mind as I peered out of our hospital window at the cars in the night. As we all are destined for Heaven, the world, then, is the womb from which we will be born into Heaven. Here is where we come into being. Here is where we grow, develop, and prepare for life outside of this womb, a fuller existence than we can yet fully sense or imagine in our humble development. Yet we sense traces of it. Like a mother's warmth to the baby she carries is God's voice to us; ever present though never totally grasped. 

Unlike my twin daughters as they were carried for nine months, however, our participation in our own development in this world is far more active. Far from our development being something that simply happens to us, it is something in which we participate with free will. David, we hear today, used his free will most unwisely and terribly. In his selfishness, he sent a man to his death. We also make mistakes in our lives, prompting the sort of necessary penitence conveyed in today's psalm: Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned. That same free will, though, equips us with the unique ability to participate with God in the building of his Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is not only our destiny - our end - but also an end that we are invited to help bring about. 

The Kingdom of God is inevitable. It is upon us. This is cause for joy amidst our sorrows. This is cause for hope amidst our despair. As you look upon all that has been created around you, all that God's finger has touched, may you and each one of us be inspired to join with God in the building of his Kingdom as long as we remain in the womb of this world.