Visualizing Faith

Must start seeing mustard seed: Matthew 13:31-32 
³¹ He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. ³² Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”

Reflection: 
It has always been hard to grasp and visualize faith for me even with ample examples in the bible. But over the past year I've come to realize an interesting take I'd like to share with all of you. I hope I won't lose you in my convoluted mind  but let's try to visualize our life as a white empty room. That is the moment we are born.

Time passes by and we start filling our room with people we love or things we value. We decorate the walls with fancy wall papers; buy a closet and fill it with clothes we like, shoes, watches, cars or about anything that makes us happy. After all, it is our room. Somewhere along our life, we accept Christ and we're given this thing the size of a mustard seed called faith. This is why those who come to faith earlier may have an easier time accessing their spirituality - their rooms were less filled and it's much easier spotting the mustard seed. But even then, it is so small and we don't quite understand its value compared to all the other things we gathered in our room so we stash it away somewhere. We grow older and continue to pile our room with work papers, relationships that come and go, maybe a couple ipads and a few trophies to show our achievements that we're proud of.We are convinced that when we invite someone into our room that they will be so impressed with the possessions that we own or relationships that we've established.

Yet in reality those outside of your room jealously look in hoping you'd let them in. Your rooms too crowded so of course you have to be selective about who you let in. Those in the room...are they in the room because you're there? Or the things inside of it? One can seldom answer that question confidently. Who is really impressed by your room but yourself?

But to anyone who's been on a missions trip, myself included, and came back humbly admitting that "there's something different there"  regarding the level connection we felt with God and the people. The reason why so many people go back over and over...well that's because when we are on the missions trip we were invited into THEIR home.

The hungering people, the "less fortunate" with a room filled of white...when we walked into their room we see a tree. We can't identify it because while our faith is buried somewhere under our possessions, the missionaries and local believers there have nurtured theirs into a tree. 

Challenge:
Jesus did not tell people to drop all their belongings nor did he say discard all your wealth without any basis. It is those things in the room that Jesus knew would tempt us away from nurturing the seed of faith. Am I saying to clean our your room? No that is unrealistic to me in my current level of faith. But I am saying that we should not be displaying our possessions and such as the centerpiece to our room.

Let us find that seed again: those who've accepted Christ MUST have it. If you feel that you don't it is not because you do no possess it; it's buried deep below somewhere. Just as cleaning a room is tedious so is cleaning our perspectives. But once we find that seed, friends let us plant it firmly in the center of the room and let us cultivate it so that the seed will flourish. Do you know why Jesus said mustard seed and not any other tree seed? Mustard trees are neither big nor tall, commonly seen as strength in OUR standards: mustard trees spread like wild fire when nurtured and the mustard seed was critical sustenance for life. The hope of of it all is that when we invite someone into our room they can go back to theirs - with a mustard seed stuck to their shoe.