³⁰ Jesus said, “How can I describe the Kingdom of God? What story should I use to illustrate it? ³¹ It is like a mustard seed planted in the ground. It is the smallest of all seeds, ³² but it becomes the largest of all garden plants; it grows long branches, and birds can make nests in its shade.”

Mark 4:30-32

Dear God, verse 30 is interesting. It portrays a little of Jesus’s tone of voice that we don’t often get. I can just kind of picture him puzzling over how to get his point across to this group of people who don’t get it yet. He search for a metaphor. To see the example he finally came up with, it’s almost like he’s saying to himself, “How do I get through to them that the Father’s kingdom doesn’t come in big? It comes in surprisingly small and grows out. And if it grows correctly, it will not only be big, but it will be a blessing to everything.”

Then he comes up with the seed metaphor. “Okay, how about a tree? A tree does so many things. It can provide food. It can provide shade. It can provide a resting place for birds. So if a tree is my end, how can I get across to them that the beginning is always small? Well, a mustard tree seed is really small. Yeah, that should work. A mustard tree seed.”

Then he pitches this concept to them: “It is like a mustard seed planed in the ground. It is the smallest of all seeds, but it becomes the largest of all garden plants; it grows long branches, and birds can make nests in its shade.”

So going back to the purpose of this series on learning about you through what Jesus says about you (the autobiography of God), what can I learn about you and how you work through this parable? Well, let me reverse it. You could be a god (little “g” intended) who said, “The kingdom of god is a king who commands that everything he declares be enforced on the people. He destroys anyone who disobeys him.” Now there are actually some parables like this such as the Parable of the Wedding Feast. But those still show you as someone who has been inclusive and longing for relationship. The difference for the man who was tossed out and separated from you is that he didn’t respect anything about what you expected of him. There was no reverence, but only selfishness. You are still not to be taken for granted or disrespected, but you are also not going to just push your way into things from the top down. You are going to start with contents that will fit inside a seed. And how does a seed work? The seed takes what it brings to the table and the uses things from it’s environment (water, nutrients in the soil, air, sunlight, etc.) and it multiplies itself and grows. It doesn’t do it in isolation, but it lives and grows where it’s planted.

Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit, as I come to the end of my vacation and use these last couple of days to prepare myself to be planted, I come to you to ask that you grow in me. The truth is, Satan can work in the same way. negative seeds can grow. The weeds you described in the Parable of the Weeds among the Wheat have the same effect. They can strangle and choke out your fruit. So help me to weed my soil today as well. Oh, Holy Spirit, help me to provide you good soil in which to grow.

I pray all of this through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus,

Amen