Matthew 13
The Kingdom of Heaven:
It comes among us like seed thrown wide and wild, everywhere. It springs up on the road, in the rocks and thorns, in the deep soil. It grows and grows, because that’s what the kingdom does—it spreads, sprouting in every nook and cranny, thriving wherever it finds a faithful home.
It grows even among the weeds, the nourisher and the consumer shooting up, side by side. It does not concern itself with making sure it is set apart from those nasty weeds, those enemies. It just grows. It’s the reaper’s job to harvest, to safely gather in his own.
It looks like the tiniest thing, that little kingdom-seed, until the wind blows it right out of your hand and it grows into the mightiest tree, a shade for weary travelers and a meeting place for every noisy, squawking bird.
It permeates our world like yeast in the dough that we don’t even notice, invisible but everywhere, making us rise and rise.
It is here with us, and yet it is hidden, a treasure in a field, the greatest pearl. We must find it, and when we do, it costs us everything. But everything is nothing then, and we fling it all from us as we run, joyously unhindered, toward that prize.
The kingdom comes for us all in the end, like a net in the sea pulling us in. I wonder, will we know it as freedom, as home? Will we see this thing that has been among us all along as the greatest fortune, the joy we must surrender to at all costs?
View from the Valley 