Secret Growth

He also said, This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it because the harvest has come.

Mark 4:26-29

Here is our Lord's comment on how the kingdom of God comes into the affairs of men. First, we must be faithful to sow the seed. You cannot expect to harvest if you never sow. We often circumvent this sowing in the church. We gather together and show films on how to sow seed; we take courses and we read books, but somehow we resist letting this seed actually take root in our own hearts. But this is the only way God has arranged for planting the kingdom in the midst of people. He is not going to do it through any program men can devise; he is going to bring it about only through the planting of the seed. And you and I must be faithful to sow it.

Second, we must leave room for God to work. We are never content with this process of sowing and then waiting for God to work; we want it to come NOW! This is the cry of our age: everything comes in instant formulas. But we cannot force it; we must wait out God's time with patience, as a farmer does. The seed does not grow up overnight. The farmer went home after he had sowed the seed and lived a normal life. As the seed takes root in our lives, we are to keep on doing normal everyday things. And all the time we are doing so, things we cannot see are happening. We are not to get discouraged when it looks as if nothing is occurring in our lives. Does a farmer get discouraged when he plants seed? Does he go out the next morning, see the field lying there just as black as the day before, and say, Oh, what a waste of time. Nothing's happening. And the next day there is still no sign of anything. After four or five days does he say, What's the use of this? Why did I waste my seed? No farmer does that. He knows that, as surely as the seed is there, it must take root. The forces of life in the soil must react with the forces of life in the seed, and then things will happen. If he waits a little while, when he goes out he finds green shoots sticking up here and there. Later the whole field suddenly turns green — almost overnight, it seems.

Finally, we must realize that the growth of the kingdom of God can be detected only at certain stages, as Jesus made clear. First the blade, then the ear, then the full stalk of wheat. Though we cannot see change in our lives from day to day, yet there are times when we can see that something has happened. When we compare what we have become with what we were a while ago, then we see change. This is exactly what a farmer does. He can look at his field any given day and not detect any change from the day before. But when he looks back two or three weeks, or two or three months, he can see remarkable change. Jesus says this is what happens in our lives as well.

Father, may I recognize that these processes will never fail until that great day when the kingdom of God shall be made visible among men. Your kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.