the Word at work, illustrated

The Word for today:
Mark 4:21-34

The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. (Mark 4:26-28)


When I was in first grade, my teacher was Miss Banks.

You probably had Miss Banks for a teacher, too. You might have called her by a different name (Miss Banks got married and moved away while I was in the second grade) but if you got to color every day, and go out in the sunshine when the spring days turned warm, and act in skits, and laugh all the time right in school, and collect leaves, and sing songs, and look forward to school every single day—then it was your town that Miss Banks moved to!

Of all the wonderful things we did, I remember my little plant the best. That doesn’t mean I know what kind of plant it was, ‘cause I don’t.

The plant itself wasn’t the point anyway. The point was helping it grow and watching it every day, and watering, and waiting, and watering and watching.

We each brought in a soup can, which we decorated with construction paper so it looked like our own. Then we got some dirt and we carefully placed the seed in a hole halfway down inside. We covered the seed over and then we placed our plants on the window sill. Every Monday and Friday we gave it just a little water, measured with great precision!

The first thing we did very morning, after we hung our jackets up, was to sprint over to the window sill to see our plant.

Nothing happened for what seemed like the longest while. Then one day it was there—green and healthy and growing and growing!

Jesus says that’s exactly what’s going on inside you. The Word of God is at work in the believer, and we know not how:

The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. (Mark 4:26-28)

Our “Stand in the Rain” Bible literacy program derives its name from the Old Testament version of Jesus’ parable:

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (from Isaiah 55:10-11)

So if you never did get Miss Banks for your teacher, then do not dismay. Jesus is the best Teacher of all, and the Seed is at work right now.

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