A Reflection for Tuesday of the Thirtieth Week in Atypical Time
Find today’s readings here.
Jesus said, “What’s the Kingdom of God like?
To what can I compare it?” (Lk 13:18)
Today’s Gospel invites us to reflect on what the dominion of God looks like.
Jesus offers two analogies, a mustard seed and yeast, and I confess that I don’t find either particularly compelling. This will likely be because I’m not a farmer and I don’t bake my very own bread. So I’m infrequently ready to look at or reflect on the small miracles that occur whenever you plant a seed or put aside bread to leaven.
But it surely also could also be because these analogies seem a bit easy and self-evident. In fact a seed will grow right into a tree; after all bread will rise. For me the approaching of the Kingdom requires an analogy of a special order.
So what’s the Kingdom of God wish to me? To what can I compare it?
The Psalm offers a picture that I find helpful: “Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine within the recesses of your private home; Your kids like olive plants around your table.”
I would love to give attention to the second a part of this passage: “Your kids [are] like olive plants around your table.” For me, the expansion of my children, the entire challenges they create and the rewards they provide, helps me to conceive of the dominion of God.
In what ways? For one, raising children is an entire lot of labor, a day-in-day-out struggle that requires every virtue we’re called as Christians to develop. Like the dominion, it’s an ongoing project, one which requires my full and conscious commitment. Raising children also offers glimpses of the dominion: in children’s innocent questions, within the purity of their emotions, within the blossoming of their minds.
I’m consistently reminded that I actually have to depend on God, that I cannot engineer my children to act like me or do what I would like them to do. So too with the dominion.
Just like the mustard seed, children will grow; like yeast, they may develop. But as a parent, that, like the approaching of the dominion, it’s ultimately out of your control. You possibly can till the soil and water the seed but ultimately you need to depend on God’s love and beauty to bring it to bloom.
I’m very aware of my very own need for God’s grace as a parent. I don’t at all times know the right way to reply to my children’s questions or emotions. I’m consistently reminded that I actually have to depend on God, that I cannot engineer my children to act like me or do what I would like them to do. I actually have to just accept the gift of their lives in all their complexity.
So too with the dominion. We have no idea when it’ll come, or what it’ll appear like. We are able to actually make certain we could have no hand in designing it. We are able to, nonetheless, do the work. We are able to work the soil and knead the dough; we are able to put dinner on the table and help with the homework; we are able to model Christian care and love.
And we are able to pray that, just like the mustard tree, our youngsters will flower, and the birds of the sky will discover a home of their branches.
