So when is the last time that you commanded a mulberry tree to get up and be replanted in the sea? Apparently, Jesus tells us in the scripture this week that it is one of the powers that comes with faith, even faith the size of a mustard seed.
What are we to make of this? That we should have some sort of magical power to move trees with speech? Are we all convicted of a lack of faith? Because last I checked, I don’t see anyone with the power to talk to trees.
I suppose the most straight forward way to see this is that with God, all things are possible. Perhaps the point is not so much that we are given mystical abilities to command plants, but that when we put our mind to something and believe in God’s power within our lives, everything is within our grasp.
Given the message of hope that we heard last Sunday through Jeremiah, perhaps this message about faith should help that hope flourish. Even in the worst of situations, by working together as the community of faith, remarkable things can happen—like aquatic mulberry trees.
It may not take the form of a mystical command, but perhaps it takes the form of a community banding together to dig up, move and transplant said tree. Perhaps it takes the form of a community that accomplishes a massive amount of work moving stuff in and out of a church building to have one of the most successful parking lot sales in history. Perhaps it takes the form of a church united working to improve the larger community by taking on challenges no one thought possible.
The point is, faith is not about mystical tree talking powers, it is about communities taking on the impossible to accomplish the incredible—and that is something that happens far more often than you might think.
What is it that you have been facing that seems improbable? Have you tried talking with your community of faith about it lately? Have you tried uniting with others to move mountains or trees? I think that one of the messages that Christ brings to us in this scripture this week, is that there is very little that cannot be accomplished when people of faith unite together and follow God out into the world.
コメント