The other day I was playing outside with one of my nephews. Easton picked up a dead branch that had fallen off a tree and with excitement said to me, “Charlie do you know what we can do with this?” Reminding myself to encourage ideas…rather than worrying about what they may be…I responded, “What?” He said, “We can stick the end of it in the ground and it will grow into the biggest tree!” My response was, “No buddy we can’t dig up the yard.”
The truth is that, of course, a dead branch won’t grow into a tree but you have to admire that 3.5-year-old perspective…I mean, why wouldn’t that work? I think it’s pretty safe to say that the more we know the harder it can be to have faith. There are just so many things that seem impossible. I’m a fan of author C.S. Lewis, and in his fictional land of Narnia there is a lamp post “growing” in a forest. It was planted there by accident during a time when the land was being created and the ground was extremely fertile. This was part of Lewis’ interpretation of how God created the world. Imagine a time when God’s creation was so fertile that practically anything could grow? Imagine those possibilities!
In the Parable of the Soils, Jesus teaches us about the unimaginable potential within the Kingdom of God. Most of the times that I have read this parable I have imagined myself and others as seeds but what if we should look at it as if we are the soil? How would that change our response?
“8Other seeds fell on good soil and bore fruit, in one case a yield of one hundred to one, in another case a yield of sixty to one, and in another case a yield of thirty to one.”
Matthew 13 CEB
Ramblings of a Faithjunkie 