God's Kingdom

Again he said, "What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade."  - Mark 4:30-32

"The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed".  For some reason, this phrase has been running through my head in the past day or so.  Perhaps it's because in today's "Experiencing God Day by Day", I was reminded that God often works through not the extraordinary but the ordinary.  And as quoted by Mother Teresa (One of my favourite 'movie' quotes, which I'm sure I've mentioned on this blog before), "The Lord likes small things best!"  After a rather emotionally charged conversation with my sister the other night about our respective roles of services at church, I got to thinking.  When we feel like things are moving so slowly at our church, when we are frustrated by the lack of leadership and spiritual guidance, and perhaps the lack of growth, both within us and within our community, we wonder if God is really with us.  When we feel frustrated by the numerous roadblocks and mountains we face when we serve, we wonder where God is in all that we do.  I thought about one thing I said to sis to encourage her in her ministry, which I myself also needed to be reminded (and by saying it to her, I reminded myself as well).  "Trust that God is working, despite the way things may appear at any given moment."  The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.  We are sowing all the time, knowingly and unknowingly.  At the same time, seeds are being sown into our lives and the lives of our friends and family, albeit sometimes they may just be a little too micro for the human eyes to see right away.

Today at Chapel, our lovely speaker took us through a journey of readings intertwined with singing hymns and listening to parts of Handel's Messiah.  We read passages from the OT as well as the NT.  The speaker challenged us to think about the passages in the OT, written about a King who is to come and redeem the Israelites from oppression, that in the context of the text, these passages were not written about Jesus.  The early Church, who were made up of Jewish people, who some had known Jesus, saw what happened throughout his life, witnessed his death and the resurrection, made sense of these passages later on to conclude that they must be about Jesus, and that Jesus is the long awaited Messiah.  Many of these passages in the OT speak of longing, longing for the one who would come and save the Israelites from oppression.  The Psalms we were were full of emotions, sadness as the Israelites were made to sing songs of Zion as they were lead away as slaves from their homeland by their captors.  Jumping forward in time to the NT, many passages in the bible also talk about waiting for Christ's second coming.  Revelation is filled with rich images of the day that Jesus will be seated at the right hand of God's throne, and thousands upon thousands will bow down and worship him.  In this season of Advent, our speaker spoke to us, we can reflect upon these passages and think of how time is fluid between when the OT passages were written (through ancient times), when the NT passages were written, now, and the future, when all were expecting the coming of the Saviour to Redeem us.  And all the while, the mystery of God has been and will evermore work between and amongst us.  The bible is a story of God and his people, and the story continues to be played out.  Our God, is a God of time.  Perhaps to him, this is all but a second in his eyes. 

Which brings me back to the mustard seed.  Today's chapel service made me think, and reminded me of the mystery of God, and how significant that is to our faith.  Usually we like to have things figured out, we like to know exactly what we are getting into before making a commitment.  In the Christian faith, there are lots of unanswered questions (at least for me!).  Often it is a struggle to stay on track, and when we do we become inundated with serving the church, or lose fervour for the Lord because we feel bound by all the 'rules' of the religion.  Perhaps we are not quite getting it.  Perhaps, we need to embrace the mystery of God, and hang onto to the mustard seed notion.  That whatever situation we find ourselves in, God is at work.  He hears our prayers, and he is present in our troubles, in our deepest suffering and pain he is there weeping alongside us.  Yet, perhaps God's answer won't come right away, perhaps it won't even come in 5 years, 10 years, this life time.  Perhaps God's grace and redemption will be for our children, our children's children.  The mysterious ways of God, we can never fathom but only begin to experience as we come into a relationship with the living Christ.

This gives me hope.  That in the most head-banging, eye-brow scrunching, or heart-wrenching hopeless situations, God is there.  We need to remember that our view of success is not often God's view of success (think my roommate first told me that, I was wowed!).  We need to remember that it's not all about us, but about the roles that we play in God's story.  God is a good.  He is loving, just, merciful, his Grace is poured abundantly upon us.  Open your hands to receive God's blessings, and embrace the mystery of God's power.