This Sunday is Fathers’ Day. It also has one of my favorite readings from the Gospels. Jesus tells two parables about “planting seeds” (Mark 4:26-34). It’s a wonderful metaphor about the growth of faith, but it’s also an apt image of being a parent. Seed planting. Will they take root? Stephanie and I have planted lots of “seeds” in our kids…why do some take root and others don’t? My role as a father is different from hers, of course, and I think about how I’m doing as a father.

My kids are in that teenager-young adult stage. My oldest son just graduated from Virginia Tech, he’s home looking for a job. My middle son graduated from high school last Spring, he’s looking for a job, too, and hoping to go to Montco. My youngest, a girl, is 17, and will be a senior at Phoenixville High School. Just when you think you have down parenting one stage, they get older and enter a new stage. And my ignorance starts all over again! We love our kids and have tried to do good by them; but it’s tough! Especially in this day and age, with cell phones, social media…now I’m sounding like a stereotype!

Jesus’ parables are all about the grace-filled surprises of growing things. In the first, the farmer plants the seeds, and then the plant does its thing. Meanwhile the farmer waits, and it becomes mature, and “he doesn’t know how.” That’s me! A botanist could explain it through genetics and external conditions…but the seed will still do what it will do. Living and growing things are miracles of Creation. Faith is like that. All the psychology in the world might help me be a parent, but there’s still a mystery in raising kids. I can’t control all the factors that will influence them no matter how hard I try—and that will be counter-productive anyway. The farmer waits, and the seeds produce of themselves.
There’s grace in all that.

God is good, and my children are in God’s hands. The seed is fruitful in ways outside my control. The other parable is of a mustard seed. It’s tiny and not worth much but becomes big and provides for other animals. It’s unexpected. The grace is that God revels in the unexpected and is at work in hidden ways.

Peace,
Pr. Christian