day thirteen

then Jesus said, "God's kingdom is like seed thrown on a field by a man who then goes to bed and forgets about it. the seed sprouts and grows—he has no idea how it happens. the earth does it all without his help: first a green stem of grass, then a bud, then the ripened grain. when the grain is fully formed, he reaps—harvest time! 

 "how can we picture God's kingdom? what kind of story can we use? it's like a pine nut. when it lands on the ground it is quite small as seeds go, yet once it is planted it grows into a huge pine tree with thick branches. eagles nest in it." 

~ mark 4:26-32, the message



i used to hate pine nuts.  it was a blind hate.  i had never tasted them, but i was sure that they tasted like pine needles smelled and i wanted nothing to do with that.  a couple years ago, though, the village church brought in a band to perform on campus and i volunteered to make dinner according to their rider.  and, as you all know, i wanted to do it all from scratch.

well, one of the band members was in the middle of a kind of fast and was only eating certain raw foods.  his agent supplied me with some recipes of things he could eat, one of them being a pine nut salad of sorts.  i gathered up the many ingredients and the creation was beautiful.  it could have been in one of those high end restaurants where the food looks so wonderful that you're afraid to eat it.

i couldn't resist.  i tried a forkful.  it tasted as good as pretty as it looked.

nowadays i pretty much have pine nuts in my house at all times.  i put them on pizza, in pasta, and on salads.  i use them in all kinds of recipes and even throw in extra from time to time.

traditionally, this parable is told in reference to a mustard seed, but eugene mixed things up a bit in 'the message' and used a pine nut instead.  i guess pine trees are more relevant to America today than a mustard trees.  the funny thing though, is that until a few years ago i had never heard of a pine nut.  in my twenty-plus years on the earth i had never came across the things, but they were more relevant to eugene than mustard seeds.

i guess i'd never been around them because i've always lived in small towns with tiny local supermarkets.  and, as katy can attest, it is a difficult task to find pine nuts in small town grocery stores.  they simply aren't a hot commodity, so they aren't restocked very often.  it's no wonder then, that i first saw them on a menu in charlotte a few years ago.

my friend katy, as i mentioned earlier, has had issues with pine nuts.  every time she needs them for a recipe, she can't find them in any of the grocery stores in or around our village.  it always turns into a very dramatic story of her driving to half a dozen stores only to end up empty handed.  or, as happened most recently, it turns into a very dramatic story of her driving to half a dozen stores, finally finding them, bring them home and a little while later finding her dog licking her lips after eating up the entire package...

now that it's public knowledge, i can share that katy has been looking for a new job and has been considering several cities for possible moves.  her main consideration for whether or not she could live in these different cities:  pine nuts.  would she be able to find pine nuts in the local grocery store?  this has been the major deciding factor.

before she accepted her new job at wake forest baptist hospital, she was sure to check in to the pine nut situation.  luckily, winston-salem has a wide variety of supermarket options and katy feels like she would in fact be able to purchase pine nuts by visiting less than three stores.  (phew...!)

those of who know katy, know that her decision wasn't made by pine nuts.  it was made by faith.  faith that this new job isn't just a random mystery, but that these small movements can be used by God to cause the great waves of the Kingdom to grow.

maybe it was made by pine nuts after all...