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.