11B21.   Ezekiel 17:22-24.    Our Almighty Wondrous God takes off a tender shoot and makes it to “become a majestic cedar.”  “I, the Lord bring low the high tree, lift high the lowly tree, wither up the green tree, and make the withered tree bloom.  As I, the Lord, have spoken, so will I do.”  What is important is not what happens on its own naturally BUT rather what God accomplishes by his power and might.  What is natural, rots; what is supernatural, is eternal.

Mark 4:26-34.   “This is how it is with the kingdom of God.”  The man scatters the seed.  It sprouts and grows and “he knows not how.”  “When the grain is ripe,” “the harvest has come.”  The seed is God’s power within us to make his divine life grow.  When his power with our cooperation has produced holiness in us, “he wields the sickle,” and God takes us off to heaven.  Then Jesus offers a second parable in which “the smallest of all the seeds” “becomes the largest of plants.”  This is to say the power of God, which in earthly terms seems of little or no visible value, is what has the greatest value, because God makes much happen from small beginnings.  In speaking in parables Jesus is saying we must join our hearts and our minds to his, to be able to comprehend what he says.

2 Corinthians 5:6-10.   To be courageous means to be people of full and wholesome heart.  As long as our heart is feed by the heart of Jesus, “we are always courageous.”  Even while we are in this world with all its earthiness, we are called to be a Godly, heavenly people.   That means “we walk by faith, not by sight,” living our lives in the hands of God and not our own. “Therefore, we aspire to please him,” because his opinion or appraisal of us, is all that matters.  “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense, according to what he did in the body, whether good or evil.”  What I think or what anyone else thinks or does, must be in full accord with what God thinks and wills, or else, it is worthless.