Lent Week 2—Thursday

Psalm 74            Genesis 42: 29-38            I Corinthians 6:  12-20            Mark 4:  21-34 

I love how Jesus compared the kingdom of God to seeds and planting.  As a garden lover, I can relate to that image and process. Mark states:  “The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the ground; and goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts up and grows – how, he himself does not know.”  When I examine a bulb before planting, it looks gnarly, bumpy, rough, basically pretty ugly.  Yet, I know once planted in good soil, and in time, it will emerge as a beautiful daffodil, caladium, amaryllis, or iris.  The process is nothing short of a miracle!  Granted, it takes faith in the process and plenty of patience.  If only we could face life with that same assured faith and patience.  The present picture in our focus is sometimes too rough and gnarly to see the eventual blooming outcome that God has in store for us. Most often, God’s plans for us are far more wondrous than we could have imagined.

In the lesson from Genesis, the writer tells the story of Jacob’s sons traveling to Egypt to find food during the great famine.  God is planting seeds for Israel to survive with first Joseph and then Benjamin.  The process is long, full of angst, and Jacob is distraught with the thought of losing his youngest sons…terrifying! But God has a bigger picture with a long focus that will multiply Jacobs’s family into a nation for survival. 

Christ’s body needed to be buried and raised up to fulfill God’s plan for salvation. I can only imagine how distraught Christ’s apostles (and his mother!) were at his death before they could grasp the larger plan of His resurrection.  We cannot imagine what God has in store for us, but with faith and patience, His perfect plan will bloom. 

Clare Nelson