No-Step Boogie

And he said, The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground.  He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how.  The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.  But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.  – Mark 4:26-29

Last night I was reading in MOTT about the Tower of Destruction and the difference between growing and building.  When you build a house, you have an idea of what you want.  You take it, perhaps, to an architect who creates a blueprint.  You hire a builder who then raises the structure according to the plan.  The blueprint tells the plumber where to run his lines, the electrician where to put switches and outlets.  It tells you which way the doors should swing.  Everything is laid out.  It’s a system – as Bob has been talking about recently.

By contrast, to grow something, we put a seed in the ground.  And we wait.  If it isn’t raining much – not a problem around here so far this year, we can water, but there’s not much else that depends on our planning or intervention.  We can rest.  We don’t really know how growth takes place.  We can certainly cut things down too soon, but if we are patient, the harvest will come regardless of our designs and maneuvers.  Or it will not. 

I suppose we could argue that there is a design built into the seed, in the DNA, that is similar to our blueprint, but a living thing does not develop solely on the basis of its genetic inheritance.  In fact there is reason to think that environmental stresses and stimuli can, in effect, throw switches that turn on or turn off certain characteristics present on the gene. 

Thus another difference in growth as opposed to building is that growth includes adaptation.  The nature of the harvest is dependent, of course, on the seed sown, but also on the conditions.  The same grapes grown in a period of hot, dry weather will have a different flavor than those in a wetter, cooler season.  The fertility of the soil and the minerals present or absent cause adjustments in development and maturation. 

God does have a plan for us, for each of us. 

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up [that is, "the perfecting of"] the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ … speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,  from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love (Ephesians 4:11-16).

In general, ultimately, we know where we are all headed.  But how that happens -- especially on an individual basis, the processes involved, the time it takes, the conditions that cause this growth, we do not know.  We can nurture and be watchful at times, just as we pull weeds from our garden and water during extended dry spells, but the end, the harvest to which God aims is something largely beyond our control.   

It is God Himself who watches, who touches here and stirs there, who send the right message and the right messenger at just the right moment, who frightens when we need to alerted, saddens when we need to weep, delights when we need to laugh, and soothes when we need to be reassured.  

My brother and sister barleycorn, it is not just the field for which our Lord cares, but each stalk where it stands.  In this we rest and trust. 

 

A Land of Hills and Valleys

For the land that you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables.  But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, a land that the Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. – Deuteronomy 11:10-12

Down in Egypt where little rain fell, the fields could be watered by drawing from the Nile River.  There in the flood plains and bottoms of the Nile, a farmer could irrigate with human or animal power running screws or pumps of some kind.  The land of Canaan was not that way.  There might be streams in the hills, and wells could be dug, but, unlike the vast and seemingly infinite water of the Nile, these sources were limited and sometimes unreliable. 

If no rain fell in Canaan, the little streams stopped running and the water table quickly dropped, draining the wells.  Man soon reached the limits of his ability.  The Israelites entering their Promised Land would have to rely on God.  Through Christ, we, too, may enter a new land.  We may leave behind us the old nature and the world system that Egypt represents.  And, just like the Israelites, we will have to leave behind our faith in man’s power to produce virtue, wholeness, meaning, and satisfaction. 

I think I expected my life to be a flat land.  When I thought about peace and contentment, I saw it as ease and certainty.  The old “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” is true, as far as it goes.  It’s also true that giants have your stuff and are not willing to give it up without a hot and bloody fight.  Once you have succeeded in driving out the enemy, you will find your inheritance consists of a lot of hills and valleys – ups and downs.  Some of our land around here is like that.  My brother bought a little 80-acre farm.  Dad looked it over and said, “Well, the good thing is you can farm three sides of it, and if you could iron it out, you’d probably have around 240 acres.”

The undulating nature of life can make it seem as if we are making no progress.  Sometimes we are up on the top, walking in the light.  Other times we are down in the hollows, shadowed and unable to see what lies ahead.  Nevertheless, God has promised to be with us, to keep watch over our lives regardless of our elevation.  The Lord’s eyes are on us as well whether we are barren and cold as winter, plowing and planting in faith as spring, enjoying growth and beauty as summer, or harvesting and rejoicing as fall.    

The temptation for me is to take care of it.  I am a problem-solver and a fixer.  If I have a catch-phrase – a printable one – it’s probably, “I’ll take care of that.”  I seem to say that all the time.  There are a lot of things I can take care of, and the same is true for all of us.  When it’s time to plow, I ought to plow.  I have a part to do.  But you can plow too much.  One of my favorite Bob Wills’ songs is “Cottonpatch Blues”.  You plow those old long, straight rows, busting the middles until the cotton gets a little height.  After that, you have to get the hoe down and chop the cotton – “Don’t go down there without your file,” Bob adds.  Finally, when the picking time comes in the fall, all you need is your cotton sack to drag and fill.   You can do all you can, but if the Lord doesn’t send the rain, there isn’t going to be any harvest. 

And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground.  He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how.  The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.  But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” (Mark 4:26-29)   

When it comes right down to it, there is no use lying awake at night worrying about it.  The process is and will always be something of a mystery to us.  The land of promise is the land of faith.

Why Am I So Miserable?

Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. -- Luke 8:11

You could say each of us gives birth from within us to Jesus.  Or we don’t.  That area where Jesus lies dormant is nonetheless a virginal womb or He is not truly birthed.  – from Rick’s comment on “Thoughts on the Comforter” 

I happened to catch a message by Robert Morris of Gateway Church down in Westlake or Southlake or one of those high-end places around Dallas.  I think this is the one, but I don’t have time to verify it this morning.  

Anyway, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen Pastor Morris.  He seems to be one of the more Raccoonish Christian preachers around (if any non-Raccoons happen across this, don’t be offended; we think that is high praise).  He does the typical exoteric stuff, but every once in a while he gets off into the esoteric.  You don’t have to watch his message to get the point.  He was talking about the necessity of being born again as Jesus explained to Nicodemus.  

Morris went on to talk about people he had met who had a common testimony.  People will often say that they thought they were “born again” as children brought up in a Christian home, attending church regularly.  At some point in their early years, they made a profession of faith and maybe were baptized.  Later, they turned from God, went off into a more secular life, found themselves miserable, and came back to turn their lives over to God, at which point, the person will almost invariably say, “Then my life completely changed.” 

Obviously part of that is often just a maturing process, but Morris pointed out that there is, in the natural realm, growth before birth.  As he put it, there is conception followed by a period of misery and suffering.  The misery then brings forth birth and a new life.  Birth is not conception.  An acorn in the ground is not an oak tree.  It’s not even a sprout. 

And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground.  He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how (Mark 4:26-27).  That passage in Mark goes on to say that the earth produces the growth on its own, starting small with the sprout then growing to productivity and harvest.  We barely understand this as biology, let alone how it works in the spiritual realm. 

I think this is not necessarily a one-time thing for a lot of us.  Like the nautilus shell we have mentioned before, God intends for us to be born again and again.  We are in misery, constrained by the womb until we are able to live in the new dimension.  Do not despair.  The Word is sown in our hearts.  We are alive in the matrix of this material world to be born.  Give it time.