Eleventh Sunday: Trusting in God’s Time

Those of you who know me know that I have the basic attitudes of trying to do too much myself and wanting everything immediately.

Jun 12, 2021

11th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Readings: Ezekiel 17:22-24;
2 Corinthians 5:6-10; Gospel: Mark 4:26-34

Those of you who know me know that  I have the basic attitudes of trying to  do too much myself and wanting everything immediately. I have somewhat of a  typical city boy attitude. I definitely would  have made a terrible farmer. Even now I’ll  go out to the flowers and say, “Come on,  let’s cut the bud stuff and start blooming.”  Farmers have to be patient. Farmers also  have to recognise that they really can’t do  things themselves. They have to depend  upon nature.

The Gospel reading from Mark contains  two parables that farmers would certainly  understand, but which drive city slickers like me nuts. The first is the parable  of the seed. The farmer plants the seed  and goes about his routine day, day after  day. Eventually the seed grows, not because the farmer does something special,  but because nature takes its course. By the  way, to the ancients, every field of wheat,  every flower, was a miracle of God’s hand. 

The second parable is that of the mustard  seed, which seems insignificant, but with  the growth that God gives becomes a plant,  probably eight to ten feet, large enough to  shelter the birds of the sky. These two parables of the Kingdom of God tell us that  we have to trust in God to give growth to  the Kingdom. Furthermore, the growth He  gives will be greater than we could ever  imagine. The kingdom that we trust God  to give growth to could be the Kingdom of  our church in the world, the Kingdom of  our parish right here, or, particularly, the  Kingdom of our home.

There are many times when we expect  too much of ourselves and others. To make  matters worse, we expect too much to happen too soon. Sometimes parents expect  their 15-year-olds to act like 21-year-olds.  Sometimes we get thoroughly disappointed in ourselves because we are not the perfect people we like to imagine ourselves  being. Sometimes we are impatient with  how we or others are progressing in life.  We may be upset with our home situations,  our marriages, our families, our jobs, or  what have you. What we have to understand is that none of us are self-made men  and women. If we trust in God He will give  growth. This growth might be very subtle,  nothing we can put our finger on. But after  a while it suddenly occurs to us: God has  brought us a long way. If we trust in God,  the growth that He gives us will be more  than we could imagine. We are all small  seeds, but God can make of us great trees.  However, if we think that we can do everything ourselves, and if we don’t trust in  God, we won’t get anywhere. None of us  can make ourselves or others grow.

Let me be a bit more specific with something that we all want: peace in our families. We have to pray to God and trust Him  to bring his peace. To think we can cause  peace to happen in our homes or anywhere  without God is to give ourselves power we  don’t have. I am not the only person in this parish  who puts too much pressure on himself  or herself.

I am not the only person in this  parish who is always looking for results.  But all of us have entrusted God with our  lives. We must trust Him to form us into  people more beautiful than we could have  ever imagined.

After all, He does a pretty good job  with the flowers. — By Msgr Joseph A  Pellegrino

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