The Smallest Seed: Mark 4:30-34

"What shall we say the kingdom of God is like?" Jesus asked, and his eyes sparkled with the delight of a teacher about to spring a surprise. "What parable shall we use to describe it?"

He reached down—perhaps he actually held one between his fingers—and lifted the smallest seed his listeners knew: a mustard seed. A speck. A nothing. You could lose a dozen in the creases of your palm.

"It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade."

They knew mustard. It started as almost nothing and became, in a single growing season, a bush eight or ten feet tall—large enough that birds nested in its branches, finding shelter from the sun. From invisible to impossible. From speck to shelter.

The kingdom would be the same. It started with a carpenter and twelve confused followers. It started in an occupied backwater of the Roman Empire, dismissed by the powerful, ignored by the important. But it would grow. And grow. And grow—until the nations found shelter in its shade.

Mark notes that Jesus spoke in parables constantly with the crowds. "He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything."

The crowds got stories. The disciples got understanding. The seed was planted in both—but only some soil would let it grow.