Today's Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 4 verses
26 He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’
30 He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; 32yet 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.’
Just a few days ago, on January 11, we marked Plough Monday, the traditional beginning of the English agricultural new year after the December fallow.
It's a long-time off yet before we'll see the stalk or the head, and the earth looks now mighty hard and even dead, but beneath the surface the soil is still alive and there lies a whole world unseen. So the plough goes in to dig up the the dirt, stir the worms, and ready the earth.
It's a long ways off, but the farmer is already making ready for Spring and even harvest. And he trusts that the earth is making ready also.
So much is still hidden yet. What this new year will bring we are all still so far from seeing. But the ground is being made ready. Soon enough the seed will find its soil. And what is to be revealed will be made known.
"The earth is the LORD's, and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein."
The earth is the LORD's; and it is good. Trust it.
Trust the earth, and the seed, and the plow, and the present that will soon enough give birth to something beautiful in the future.
Ryon Price is the Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
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