Today’s passage is Mark 4:26-34. Jesus tells 2 parables about the kingdom of God. First he compares it to a scattered seed that grows by itself with no help from the sower who reaps when it is ripe. Next he compares it to a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds, which grows into the biggest plant under whose branches birds can nest. Jesus spoke only parables to the crowds but to his disciples he explained them.
Are you in control of your life?
What small thing did you dismiss that grew into something big?
At the moment I am sick and have been for over a week.
I follow traditional instructions for healing and take my medicine. I’m still sick.
Nothing works. I can’t control my health.
When I’m not sick I think I can. But as Pastor Kim says, when you are not in hardship, you think you can do anything.
I slept poorly last night because I couldn’t control my mind.
It wouldn’t turn off and let me sleep.
Maybe the new medicine was partly to blame but I think it was mostly that I couldn’t stop worrying about things I want to control but don’t or can’t.
My mind was like a movie that kept starting by itself every time I turned it off.
And when I watched it I became the hero of a ridiculous plot that somehow never solved the problem.
When I stopped my mind movie, I could rest for a moment but then the part of my mind that worried started another movie on the same theme.
Even calling to Jesus and thinking of the cross worked only a short time.
Finally I got up and did my QT.
When I read today’s passage, there was the description of my situation in verses 27, 28: “the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.
All by itself the soil produces grain”. The seed of worry, the seed of not being in control, grew of its own accord in my mind, becoming the “largest of all plants” (32) under which other worries came and perched.
The result was that not only did I not have control over events in the real world, I also had no control over my own mind.
Suddenly it was the worst of all possible situations!
Jesus repeatedly tells me not to do what I was doing, to consider the lilies of the field, to give him my burdens because worrying never changed anything.
What I found in doing my QT was exactly what Jesus meant by giving him the burden.
I wish I had got up in the middle of the night and done it! Next time I will.
Application: Walk into my problems this morning praising the Lord because I know I can trust him.
Lord, let me turn to you more quickly when trouble comes instead of trying to control what I know I can’t from the beginning.
