“Just Do It” “She’s Changing Her Life”

The Acoustic Word

The story of the mustard seed.  We’ve all heard this parable many times before.  How the smallest of seeds, the mustard seed, can grow up rapidly into a big shrub, and produce shade and limbs strong enough to support the birds of the air and their nests.  Jesus used the story of the mustard seed to teach people about the nature of faith, and in today’s gospel, “The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.”

So what is it that Jesus is trying to tell us in this mustard seed story?   I don’t think Jesus is saying we can do great things as long as we just have just a small amount of faith. I think that what Jesus is actually trying to tell us is that it doesn’t take much faith at all because the ability and power to do great things comes from God.

I think the point of the story is quite simple, stop worrying about what you think you can’t do, stop obsessing about your inadequacies, stop remembering your failures, stop being overwhelmed by impossibilities, stop thinking up excuses, stop being ruled by doubt and fear, and just do it!  (The Gospel according to Nike)

I don’t know about you, but I know that I’ve spent way too many hours in prayer asking “for more”, “Increase my faith Lord and then I will be able to do all kinds of great things!”  And I have not spent enough time “just doing it”, doing the work of the gospel, the particular things that I have been called to do.

“She’s Changing Her Life”

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The great expectations of God are met by God through people who ultimately are just willing to do the work!  St. Paul in the book of Philippians proclaims “we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.”  The key is not getting “more resources” but rather placing ourselves in Christ, in the kingdom present even now, in the place where all things are possible.   And that’s key, the answer is not just “positive thinking”, although that’s a part of it, it’s about placing yourself in Christ, where positive things happen. God brings us together to make us strong, God brings us together to build us up, God brings us together to share our hopes and dreams in ways that truly make “all things possible,” God brings us together so we can “just do it.”

Change your life by connecting to Christ, be in Christ, be a part of the kingdom that comes! Amen.

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Mark 4:30-34    30 He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” 33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; 34 he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.