Jan 20, 2014 - Nothing's Happening Here...Until it Does

Friday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

Scripture Readings

In this year of focusing on Everyday Encounters with Christ, I think it's important to reflect deeply on the everyday stuff we often miss, or just really don't account for in our lives.  I'm thinking here of how it took me a year to be able to do a particular pedal move on the organ; or how it takes a very slow, long time for my four year old to have learned how to draw. Two years ago, she was drawing chicken scratches; today she's drawing all kinds of amazing cows and ducks and superheroes that are actually recognizable.
That kind of growth happens slowly though - so slowly it's imperceptible. The difficulty with that in our fast-paced culture is that I think we often give up on goals, relationships, and learning new things too quickly - because we forget that most of the time, things happen slowly.

Today's scriptures ask us to focus on that. The Gospel reading (Mark 4:26-34) describes two different seed parables Jesus told about the Kingdom of God. The seeds grow from the smallest - even the most imperceptible and improbable looking things - to become large and visible and harvestable. Crazy, but true. 

The first reading (Hebrews 10:32-39) describes people who, I think, have lost a bit of their confidence in their faith; they're not sure about what they're doing anymore. But the author of Hebrews asks them to remember days past when God definitely acted and helped them. It is remembrance of past events, combined with the knowledge that God often works in the small and insignificant details of life that should restore us to faith and keep us on God's path - even when it seems like nothing's happening here.

Nothing's happening here, until it does - until one day the seed you planted years ago is a tall tree. Today, let us take a moment to think about the small, even seemingly insignificant encounters we have with God - so small that perhaps we discount those encounters as being from God at all. Instead of discounting, let us rejoice and give thanks that God acts in our lives in all kinds of ways.

- Jana M. Bennett