Parakalein

New and fresh every time.
For me God's word comes alive as I live and breathe new thoughts and new ideas.

I am preaching in a church that uses the lectionary so one of the benefits is that it forces you to look into the teachings of sacred scripture rather than come up with a sermon on your own.  I have done it both ways and grown in both ways yet the latter forces you to do more work and so to benefit more.

Last Sunday as I was preaching, I realized a deeper truth.  I had prepared to say that we all need to have a mustard seed of faith to see others as they are and to live as God wants us to live: by faith not by sight.  This is not a new thought.  What struck me and came out my mouth is that the mustard seed that smallest of seeds is in all of us.  Jesus taught in Mark 4:25-34 that the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.  The farmer sows the seed then waits until the seed does what it naturally will do, grow and flourish.  The farmer just lets the seed grow.

The mustard seed is the seed of God in you and me.  So small we often do not see it in ourselves or in others.  The Kingdom of God is like that.   It is in you and in me but we often do not see it so we work at and on things that we do see.  Namaste  is the expression that means: the soul, spirit or seed of love in me sees the soul, seed, spirit of love in you.  I do not have to work to cultivate this seed.  It flourishes as God flourishes in us regardless of anything until the harvest.  We have to "stop working" on the things that we see and count as important.  Evaluating and others based on what we see them do misses the work of the kingdom. Evaluating ourselves based on what we do does the same.  Exploring and expanding our capacity to see ourselves and others as God sees us from the inside, where the mustard seed of faith lives, helps us to live form the inside out and to love others from the inside out.  This is the Kingdom of God in you and me.  Loving and living from the inside. Loving and living in faith not by sight.  We them look at people not triggered by what we see them do, say or act but because we choose to see the seed of God in them from the seed of God in us.

Be the mustard seed.  See the mustard seed in everyone.  This is the work of the Kingdom.