Parables

Again, what is the Kingdom of God like, and to what shall it be compared?   It is like the mighty ocean, full of breaking waves in all of its glory.   Now there have been many who have sought to understand the ocean’s waves and their movements. Their understandings can be seen in their depictions throughout art history.    Hokusai’s famous rendition of The Great Wave, painted in 1831, is possibly the most reproduced...

Or again, what is the kingdom of heaven like? And to what can it be compared?   It is like a wealthy father who loved his only son. They shared everything in life and withheld nothing from one another.   One day the son was murdered in the streets by a gang of orphaned teens. In his grief the father was also moved to compassion and said to himself, “what good is all my wealth...

What is the kingdom of heaven like? Or what can we compare it to?   It is like gifts given to orphans who’ve never received a single gift in their entire lives.   The first orphan refuses to open the gift, for it is wrapped beautifully and with great care. If that isn’t love, what is? So they set the gift carefully on a shelf in their room, ignoring the lightness of the box and...

What is the kingdom of God like? And to what can it be compared?   The kingdom of God is like a father who built his family home on the upper banks of the Platte River in Nebraska, where the sandhill crane migration took place in the wetlands and riverbanks just outside their family room windows.   The father loved to watch these birds every year and kept a pair of the finest binoculars beside...

What is the kingdom of God like? And to what can it be compared?   It is like young father who remembers his joy for building spaceships out of legos when he was young and wants both of his children to experience the same joy of creativity and exploration afforded by those colorful building blocks, so he seeks out the king of all lego spaceship sets, and buys one for each of them- the massive...

What is the Kingdom of God like? And to what can it be compared?   It is like a thief and a murderer, sharing a single cell in a dirty prison. Through the barred windows they can see the world outside, the blue sky overhead, freedom, yet just out of reach.   Not that life out there had ever gone well for them. It had been one loss after another, and a life spent forever...