Patient Waiting

 The Kingdom of Heaven is like a wheat field, like a mustard seed, like yeast. What do all these have in common? Time. Each requires patience in order for their work to be complete. A sower plants a wheat field and an enemy sows weeds shortly after. The sower doesn’t know about this unhappy circumstance until the seeds begin to grow and show themselves for what they are. Rather than showing displeasure, the sower chooses patience. He tells his servants to wait for the crop to be full grown before handling the problem of the weeds. His patience doesn’t change the situation, but it does create the space for the seeds to do their work. The same patience is needed for mustard seeds. Seeds need time to germinate, often at least a week. For that week it looks like the sower has nothing to show for the work he has done. The soil just sits there, all the work is happening below the surface away from curious eyes. If the sower doesn’t wait and digs up the seeds to see if they are growing, they will die. Yeast works in a similar way. It’s so small we cannot see it at work. But step away from the flour, water, and salt for a few hours and the evidence will be plain that a great change has taken place. The Kingdom of Heaven is just like the wheat field, the seed, the yeast. It is a present reality and at the same time is developing, anticipating, growing. We live in the midst of the Kingdom of God and we still have work to do to bring about the Kingdom of God.

 The Kingdom of  God is here, even if here is on vacation. The Kingdom of Heaven is here even when our usual routines and schedules are upside down. No matter what sort of Ordinary Time we are experiencing, the Kingdom of God is in the midst of it. We can learn so much about God from the sower. He doesn’t get anxious or overreact when he finds out about the weeds in his carefully planted field. He doesn’t say to scrap the whole project or abandon it to the birds. He continues to care and tend for the field as he intended to, giving the wheat the chance to be stronger than the weeds. As baptized children of God, we receive this same care and love. We are accompanied and cherished by God, even when the weeds try to grow tall all around us.