Growing

I am awed by the insight in Mark 4:26-33 as it's identified in Brennan Manning's Souvenirs of Solitude (p71).  How is it that I had not seen so obvious a truth?  That it is God who makes the seed grow, it is God who does the work!  Can it be that I have been so inculcated with the heritage of protestantism (called "the work ethic") that even the Scriptures have been veiled?  Well, of course! That's the way it happens.

So God, through Brennan, breaks through again, and I am recalled to the truth.  And Brennan goes deep, suggesting that it's not "Work as if everything depended on you and pray as if everything depended on God" but "Work as if everything depended on God and pray as if everything depended on you".  This second is much more appropriate, because it is much more challenging.  (And it fits with the comment in Stanley Grenz' Prayer: the Cry for the Kingdom, that "God has voluntarily made himself dependent upon our prayers." p51)

I had the opportunity today to share with someone about growing in Christian discipleship.  We reflected on the story of the seed growing silently, and she grasped as a gift of God that her commitment to following Jesus is nothing less than being open to what God would have her do and be.  There is no need for us to strain ourselves into fit some super program, but simply allowing ourselves to be planted in the ground, there to grow as God would make it happen.

Not my love, but Yours; not my will, but Yours; not my work, but Yours.