It will be like this

Haiku of the Kingdom

Lots of parables;

what will the kingdom be like?

It will be like this!

The mustard seed, small,

sown in a field, growing large;

a home for the birds.

Yeast, mixed with flour,

three measures, causing the bread

to rise and become.

A hidden treasure,

uncovered; sell ev’rything

and purchase the field!

A merchant, searching

for pearls, finds the perfect one;

sells ev’rything else.

The net that catches

all kinds of fish; sort them out,

discard the useless.

Do you understand?

You are like a scribe finding

new and old treasures.

© Ken Rookes 2020

we plant seeds

" This is what we are about: we plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.
   We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own."
-attributed to Oscar Romero 1917-1980

Parable of the leaven

'we who eat the bread'

“ ... But we who eat the bread when we come in

Out of the cold and dark know it is a deeper mystery

That brings the bread to rise:

It is the love and faith

Of large and lonely women, moving like floury clouds

In farmhouse kitchens, that rounds the loaves and the lives

Of those around them ...

Just as we know it is hunger –

Our own and others’ – that gives all salt and savor to bread ...”

Thomas McGrath

I love the yeast parable

God longs for God and uses us,

Rises in us ....

Becomes in us.

Let us be silent, a quiet dough

Where God moves into every pore ...

Where God lives as God pleases

Let us rise simply

A quiet dough.

Gunilla Norris