SMALL BUT GROWING

He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” —Matthew 13:31, 32

We tend to measure things by the large, the dramatic, the tragic, and the alarming. It is hardly surprising that these are the things that catch our attention.

“A lot of times good news happens slowly and bad news happens all at once. And so we tend to focus on the bad news that’s crashing over us in waves, and not on the slow long-term work that people are doing together to try to make a better world for us to share.”* This is all the more true in our understanding of the kingdom of God. Jesus taught His followers that we should not be surprised if the kingdom of God looks small and perhaps inconsequential, particularly in contrast with the bad news, the tragedies, and the powerful systems of our world. But like that small seed, the kingdom of God continues to grow, sometimes dramatically, but often almost imperceptibly. Over the past 2,000 years, even the story of Jesus itself has seemed unlikely to be told and retold, but it still persists as one of the most enduring influences in the world today. We should not be afraid to be small. When we seem to have little influence or support, we can still be the mustard seeds of God’s kingdom and share with others.

The potential for the largest of garden plants is already present in the smallest of all the seeds. In the kingdom of God, we learn to measure things differently.

Dramatic, bad news is not as powerful as quiet goodness.

Things that make us afraid are never as important as those that give us hope.

* Author John Green, in conversation with Steve Levitt on People I (Mostly) Admire (podcast episode, November 11, 2022).