Kingdom-like

 Luke 13

(Parable of the Mustard Seed)

18 Then Jesus said, “What is the Kingdom of God like? 

How can I illustrate it? 

19 It is like a tiny mustard seed that a man planted in a garden; 

it grows and becomes a tree, 

and the birds make nests in its branches.”

I grew up on a small farm in southeastern Ohio in the 1950's & 60's.

My mom sometimes would plant mustard seeds to grows greens for us to eat.

Mustard seeds are tiny - like the size of the head of a straight pin.

And some of those mustard plants she wouldn't harvest but let them grow up to collect the seeds for next year.

Some of the mustard plants would grown to 5' to 6' tall!

And one year, it seems a wren built a nest in the center of one of them.

(Parable of the Yeast)

20 He also asked, “What else is the Kingdom of God like? 

21 It is like the yeast a woman used in making bread. 

Even though she put only a little yeast in three measures of flour, 

it permeated every part of the dough.”

One of the best cooks I've EVER known was my Grandma Carrie.

She baked bread ALL the time.

She had a HUGE bowl that she mixed the bread dough in - well, I was a kid, so everything felt kinda huge, I guess 😁

But I remember watching her stir all those ingredients in that big bowl - there was always LOTS of flower in it.

And she would have a couple of packets of yeast she would add - both packets together maybe had a tablespoon of yeast in them.

She stir the yeast in a cup of warm water, put it on the table to let it "think" for a minute, & then stir it in the big bowl with everything else.

Then she'd put it near the cookstove, or sometimes near a window that had sunshine coming through it.

And the dough would rise to almost 3 times the original size.

As a kid I always found it interesting that the tablespoon of yeast made all that dough triple in size.

Granny lived to be 108! She & her hubs, Will, my Grandpa, used to sing in local revivals, funerals, & services in the hill counties of southwestern Ohio. She was her church's pianist/organist all of her life, until she had her second stroke. And she played by ear - never learned to read music. And if you were singing a song for a service & it was a little too high or too low for you, she could automatically transpose it to a better key. She was somethin' else... 

I'd give anything to eat a piece of Granny's yeast bread right now...