Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle B

Reflecting on Mark 4: 26-34

Over the past few months I’ve had the great joy of reconnecting with some friends from high school.  As a group we drifted away from each other almost immediately all those years ago, but some one-on-one friendships have held fast through the decades.

It wouldn’t have been impossible to find each other through the years.  But in the magical, expansive time-frame of friendship we have gravitated back, forgiving each other for abandoning our teenaged promises to stay close, to help with the raising of babies and the burying of parents.

Each of us has changed in huge ways.  Illness and loss have forged not-invisible gashes across our souls. But the sweet gifts of time and grace have given us all the chance to become more and more the people we wanted to be way back then.  How?  We do not know.

We are like the farmer who sows the seed and then sleeps and rises, week after week, and is then astounded to see the wheat that has grown high and golden while no one was watching.  How? He does not know.

There are secret seeds growing in us all the time.  How blessed to encounter someone with whom we may once been estranged and realize that those wounds healed long, long ago.  Or maybe it’s bad habits that once plagued us that we one day notice haven’t tempted us in years.

Look around today.  Billions of seeds, secretly buried in the dark and cold, have burst open to create the luscious greens that surround us on the grass and on our tables. Grace abounds.  How? We do not know.  But we live in astonished gratitude.

What secret victories have you achieved through the long gift of time?

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I have come to light a fire on the earth; how I wish it were already burning (Lk.12:49).

Ordinary Time - Cycle B