After a followup with the heart doctor this morning for an expensive way to be told all the tests say I’m fine, this is just what I needed to read for the first time in PNTC and to be reminded of again in an email from Chuck Fuller:
CF: “At some point, Dr. Seifrid noticed my weariness. We often spoke briefly following Sunday evening service, and he was always encouraging. Yet, on this night, he made a point to come to me. He leaned in closely and said softly, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘the kingdom comes small.’ In a moment, I was unburdened, liberated. My entire philosophy of ministry instantly transformed.”1
“Jesus likens the kingdom of God to a process of growth. A seed is not spectacular, nor does its laborious growth attract attention. Night and day a farmer waits for seeds; “he sleeps and gets up,” and life goes on as it always has. But simultaneously and independent of the farmer another process is at work. Slowly, imperceptibly, “the seed sprouts and grows.” … the seed is so harmless and negligible that the farmer at first may be unaware of its growth. “He does not even know how” it happens. Despite the farmer’s absence and ignorance, however, the soil brings forth “all by itself” (Gk. automatē), from which we derive the word “automatic.” The seed contains within itself a power of generation and an orderly process of growth—“first the stalk, then the ear, then the full kernel in the ear”—that transpires quite apart from the farmer… Apart from sowing, the only human activity in this parable is waiting in faith, confident of a harvest to come (see Jas 5:7). The coming of the kingdom of God is likened to a process of growth but a process strangely independent of human activity. Despite inauspicious beginnings and the absence of human involvement, the seed contains within itself fruit-bearing potential. The seed, like the gospel, prospers of itself, and once sown sets in motion a process that leads to harvest.”2
- https://twitter.com/ChuckwFuller/status/1067599199942909952 ↩
- James R. Edwards, The Gospel according to Mark, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: Eerdmans; Apollos, 2002), 143. ↩
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