I mentioned this past Sunday the evening walk that Susan and I often take. As we live just outside of Millvale, on a busy road, our walk heads into Millvale, and most of it is on sidewalks. The sidewalks are in various states of newness, repair, and disrepair. One section, in front of a fairly newly renovated house, is similarly fairly newly renovated--new concrete, smooth, with no unplanned cracks in it. Another section, in front of a house that looks pretty much abandoned, is sort of part sidewalk and part gravel, because of wear and tear and neglect. And the older sections of sidewalk that are still in pretty good shape have another feature--there are green things growing up through the cracks. Some of the green stuff is grass. Some of it seems almost to be future trees--growing straight up as high as two feet.
It seems like you can't stop stuff from growing.
It has been stated that nature abhors a vacuum. It seems to me that, at least in the climate we live in here, nature also abhors lack of life, and we can't seem to stop this life from happening, even in places that we have tried to use differently. There is probably some explanation from botany, but it would explain that it happens in a particular way--not so much why it happens in that particular way (my apologies to any botanists if I've mischaracterized this knowledge).
In this parable, Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is like seed that sprouts and grows, and the one who planted that seed "does not know how". God's Spirit is at work in the world, and seems to be at work in ways and in places that we wouldn't expect. We could probably sort out some it, but maybe our task ought rather to be to keep our eyes open to those places where we get glimpses of God at work, in the world, in lives, in movements and trends and manifestations of love and subtle, understated power.
GOSPEL Mark 4:26-29
26 He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’