The Need to Know

Looking toward preaching on Sunday I re-read Mark 4:26-34, and I realized that I had missed something before. Jesus tells this story of what the kingdom of God is like: 

"As if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how."

That was the part I missed. The gardener scatters and then goes on doing what they do. They sleep, they rise and mysteriously the seed sprouts. In our modern age we have a greater sense of how this all happens. Even so, there is some mystery to it all. We don't have control. God calls us to scatter the seed and then live our lives. The kingdom will sprout without our having the details. The Holy Spirit is not a project manager. 

So it goes that a parable I have heard all my life rings new like a weed sprouting a day after I sprayed my beautiful garden. I don't know how, but it has sprouted and wrapped around my present need. So I will sleep and rise night and day trusting that the Spirit is moving us and we don't have to know how.