Beyond my kitchen window is a garden patch. A previous owner created slightly raised beds which I have only partially recovered as a vegetable garden this season. The other portion has some bulbs and then is just weed. When you are cutting four acres of ground, a weed patch is at least one area you can ignore. Over the last two winters I have noticed the weeds contain much seed and the birds feed there. Something of God’s balance is here. Last spring I did not clear the weeds until the birds had other feeding ground. Today’s Gospel allows me to feel generous.
"With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade." Mark 4:30-32
I think about this tiny seed of faith in my early life. I did not plant it. God did in my creation. Most children express a natural wonder about God. Adults either water it or pull at its roots to remove it. Mine was watered and nurtured by some essential adults in my life. If you are so blessed as to have a child wonder about God with you, mind how you respond, listen to her curiosity. You may find this place of little seeds stir within your own lost wonder.
By the time I was making it through the difficult season of adolescence I had a goodly bush within me. When life seemed uncertain, even mean, I had both friends and this bush of faith. Sometimes I plucked its seeds to feed me. Sometimes I tucked under its cooling shade to find comfort when the world was rough, peers unkind, the first blush of sexuality too strong and disorienting, moral decisions demanding, self worth perplexing. Prayer was the shade. Faithful adults and worship was the seed place. God’s reign within grew largely unnoticed, yet progressive.
Over the decades, dark times have played with me as have times of light and insight. That is the rhythm of life and faith. I often do not see how this reign of God has shaped me. I take it for granted as I do the rising of the sun, the dependability of the trees shade, the purr of the cat on my belly. I have learned to like kindness more than anger, even if both have a place and right balance. I find it better to forgive than to hold on to the negative, to move on in life. Sharing my wealth and managing my poverty has grown me wiser. I notice that most folk have a deep good to be sought out patiently. Some access it more easily than others. What is hopeful wins most of the time. What is broken is repaired by love when we give into it. What will not give into love and kindness should not possess my soul even if it does someone else’s. These seeds grow the Kingdom within and without.
Jesus died between two men considered weeds by some. One mocked at Love, the other noticed Love and asked mercy and remembrance. Both requests were granted from the unlikely place of suffering. The second thief still had enough wonder left to see God’s reign in a most unlikely place, coming death. That tiny seed was still alive in an overlooked life.
I think this summer I will let those weeds continue to grow and feed next winter’s birds and remind me I too both feed on God’s reign and thus feed others. We all can do this even if we are far better than weeds.
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