SECOND THOUGHT: REVEALING GOD’S KINGDOM

(Additional reflections on Monday’s post, Revealing God’s Kingdom)

One of my favorite children’s books is Miss Rumphius, by Barbara Cooney. The story tells of Alice Rumphius, who as a young girl would hear her grandfather’s stories of faraway places and declare, “When I grow up, I too will go to faraway places and when I grow old, I too will live beside the sea.”

To which her grandfather would add, “There is a third thing you must do… you must do something to make the world more beautiful.” ¹

After a lifetime of adventures and now an older woman, Miss Rumphius looks upon her beautiful garden of lupines and wishes she could plant more of them, but a season of illness and winter weather keep her from doing so. Yet, the following spring, she is surprised to discover lupines growing over the next hill! The winds and birds had helped scatter the seeds. Miss Rumphius then begins to scatter lupine seeds wherever she goes, and by the following spring there are lupines growing everywhere.

She had helped the world become more beautiful.

Jesus also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how...”

We can freely and generously scatter the seeds of God’s goodness, trust the winds of the Spirit to carry them, let the seasons of Creation nurture them. We may not know how the seeds will sprout and grow, but we do not work alone. We can joyfully, simply open our hearts and hands to share the love of God–and together, make the world more beautiful.

“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” —Desmond Tutu

¹Cooney, Barbara. Miss Rumphius. New York: Penguin Books, 1982. Print.
(This story is fictional, although there seems to be an actual woman who scattered lupines in Maine.)
The bible passage is Mark 4:26-27 NRSVUE, found at https://www.biblegateway.com/
Photo by Karen