Mark 4:26-34
He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
He also said, “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.”
With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
Living as I do in the second half of my life, I recognise looking back, that I really didn’t make much happen. Somehow my life unfolded.
Was it John Lennon who said, “Life is what happens while you are making other plans.”?
That isn’t to say that I haven’t been occupied and obsessed with trying to strategise and organise, manipulate and manage the direction and flow of where my life was going. Somehow though, the really good things that have come my way have been more organic and opportunistic than my plans would have plotted.
Knowing this makes me really appreciate the teaching of Jesus for this Sunday. The kingdom of God happens. It is organic. Alhough we can co-operate with the processes of God we should never think we can control them.
Thank God. Mystery will always triumph over our manipulation.
I love Jesuit Fr. Anthony de Mello’s definition of enligtenment.
“Enlightenment”, he says, “is complete co-operation ith the inevitable”
That is the Kingdom.
The Listening Hermit 
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