Sunday, July 20, 2025
Sunday, July 20, 2025
Scriptures:
-
-
Community is shaped by the conversations we share. These questions and reflections are a tool to help you meaningfully engage with the themes of this week's teaching.
-
CALL TO WORSHIP Psalm 103
MUSIC Curated by Kevin Borst
The McClures - Reign Above It All
Commons Worship - Be Thou My Vision
Brooke Ligertwood - A Thousand Hallelujahs
Hillsong Worship - O Praise The Name
PRAYING THE SCRIPTURE
Written by Bobbi Salkeld
Today, I’d like to invite you into a summertime reflection where we will pray with the Parable of the Growing Seed in Mark 4.Jesus told stories to bring the truth into focus. This is a story Jesus told about the kingdom of God. Feel your feet on the ground, and then I’ll guide you.
Let us pray.Jesus began: This is what the kingdom of God is like.
As we consider a parable together, we prepare for the upside-down wisdom of God at work in our midst.
Jesus’s story went: The kingdom of God is like a person who scatters seed on the ground.
God places the work of the kingdom into our own hands. Like seeds to scatter, we hold the potential for how faith, hope, and love will spring up in the world. We aren’t meant to hoard the seeds. We are meant to fling them out into the world with kind gestures, trust over suspicion, and the capacity to help wherever we can.
Jesus said, Night and day, whether the farmer sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though the farmer does not know how.
Let this image settle your worry. The growth of healing and wholeness in your life and in the world is already happening. Can you trust that? That right now, God is growing love, God is growing forgiveness, and God is growing your imagination for what might be next.
Then Jesus said: All by itself the soil produces grain – first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head.
With summer’s longer days, be reminded today that everything good and growing takes time. Our grief takes time, the start of something new takes time, healing our bodies and relationships takes time. Even in your rest and play, God is taking care of the serious stuff.
Jesus finishes with these words: As soon as the grain is ripe, the farmer puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.
Even good seasons come to an end. May you sense the mysterious ways God is bringing about the harvest of love, creativity, and care with your efforts and even when you’ve made none whatsoever.
God is always at work.
Amen.
SERIES BUMPER
Reads A Classic
