[Mark 4.26-29]
The mystery of God
is as if someone scatters seed on the ground,
letting it go, letting it go,
allowing what is fecund to return to its source;
and she sleeps and rises, dies and is raised,
surrenders to the unseen, and returns,
endures the dark loss, the helpless awakening;
and the miracle grows in that unseen place,
the gravid darkness, life-giving grave.
Something beyond, beneath, does this,
and the sower knows she doesn’t know how.
It emerges slowly, the grace:
first a promise, then a sign,
then the whole thing in its fullness.
And when the time is ripe,
when the fruit gives itself up,
she enters with the sharp blade
that separates seed from chaff,
because now is the time.
You are the seed to be scattered, dead and buried,
and raised, transformed, and given over.
Your life is the seed, you let go of it,
and after much dying and rising
it produces, you know not how.
We are the seed, God’s people,
and only after much death and resurrection
do we become life-giving bread.
God is the seed, growing secretly in you,
bearing fruit abundantly.
God’s promise is the seed in this world,
God’s grace, silently flourishing beneath our feet.
ripening, ripening.
—June 12, 2018