Isa 55:10-11; Rom 8:18-23; Matthew 13:1-23
Things are not always rosy in our lives. The problems which we face challenge and change us. They cause us quite a bit of hesitation in our decision making process. They prompt us to start questioning the obvious. We begin to doubt. Sometimes we lose our internal peace. Sometimes we lose our way. This is why so many of us need some kind of reassurance, some kind of support to know that we are on the right track, that we continue doing God's work, that we continue doing what God want us to do.
This is also why so many passages of the Holy Scriptures which we read in the church every weekend, including this weekend, try to give us that assurance and support. They are constantly reminding us, in different ways:
1) That God wants us to be an integral part of His efforts to transform this world into His kingdom,
2) That God never quits, and will never quit until His kingdom is established,
3) That God's first priority in building His kingdom is not efficiency, the one which different corporations use, but generosity and love.
This is why again in today's readings we hear that God's word is offered to each one of us freely and unconditionally and in abounded ways, the same way, as the prophet Isaiah says, the rain and snow come down upon the earth; so we can help God to bring His kingdom to fruition. This word does not order us or coerce us, but it challenges and invites us. Regardless of times and circumstances of our times and our lives the word is ever profound, ever present, and ever relevant. We just need to tune up our minds and hearts to receive it and to understand it. And if we do that, we are changed and completely transformed, the same way each seed is changed and transformed after being sown by the sower.
Building God's kingdom is not an easy task. Sometimes it is very messy and confusing. But God is relentless.
Shortly before his execution by hanging in a Nazi death camp in April 1945, 23 days before the Nazi's surrounded, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran pastor and theologian , wrote: "Each of us is to decide whether we are willing to trust God's word or not, whether we are willing to let ourselves be held by it, as by no other word in life or in death. And I believe we can find true joy and peace only when we have made this decision."
Have you made this decision? Have you accepted God's invitation to be with Him on the same winning team? If not what is it going to take God, fate, or you to do it?
