August 6, 2015
Today’s reading from Encounter with God

God Is at Work!

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Opening Prayer

Holy One, I can count on Your promises. You said You will be my God and will be with me always. I am glad.

Read Matthew 13:31-43

[31] He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. [32] Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” [33] He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.” [34] Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. [35] So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet: “I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.” [36] Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.” [37] He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. [38] The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, [39] and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. [40] “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. [41] The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. [42] They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. [43] Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.

Scripture taken from the THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, NIV Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Reflect

“Small numbers make a difference to God. There is nothing small that God is in” (D.L. Moody, 1837-1899).

Here now are the yoked parables of the mustard seed and the leaven. It’s true: big things come from small beginnings. We learned that in Sunday school. But there is more to the pulse here. Jesus seems to be addressing the agonizing doubts of those who look at him and have difficulty perceiving the kingdom. It just seems so wrong: the shocking forgiveness of a sinful woman wiping Jesus’ feet with her hair, the humbling descent into the world’s sin, the bare weakness of the cross–this all looks like a losing, not a victorious, Messiah.

We keep yearning in our own lives for the dramatic moment which will craft us into significance, the one majestic sacrifice we make which will define why we are here. I think of Thomas Moore in Robert Bolt’s play, standing alone against Henry VIII, at his life’s one definitive crossroads, saying: “I die the king’s good servant, but God’s first.” If only my life could be that significant, I want to say. Yet look at the mustard seed and the leaven again. The truth is that kingdom life is not usually remarkable at all. Kingdom conversion and growth seem most to be the silent insinuations of Jesus into our hearts. Here Jesus comes into our lives in ways that often seem discouragingly undramatic.

And yet the seed comes, then the leaven–with a power we never imagined; and on the other side are forests and feasts. “There is nothing small that God is in.”

Nothing is insignificant which God indwells. We need retrained eyes and uncynical hearts to recognize by the Spirit what seems mostly a waste of time to the world. A New Testament lies open in the back garden of a friend’s house, and Augustine reads one verse. A single verse. That’s enough to turn the tide and swing open the kingdom of God.

Apply

Have you been waiting for some tsunami from God before you are willing to sign on with him? Take a moment and trace the smaller insinuations of seed and leaven God has been sending which you have been blind to.

Closing prayer

Lord Jesus, deliver me this day from despising small things. Give me kingdom eyes which pierce to the mysteries from beyond this world.

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