Growing seeds that bear fruit

Good News Reflection
Friday of the 3rd Week in Ordinary Time
January 29, 2010

Today's Readings:
2 Sam 11:1-10a, 13-17
Ps 51:3-7, 10-11
Mark 4:26-34
http://www.usccb.org/nab/012910.shtml
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/10_01_29.mp3

Growing seeds that bear fruit

Today, something is going to happen to you that will give you the opportunity to touch someone's life with God's love. If you consciously choose to make the most of the situation, you will feel challenged, perhaps a bit nervous or intimidated, but you will experience the joy of making a difference for the kingdom of God. And you might be surprised at how well you do!

You'll do well because God has been preparing you for this situation for a long time. Your trials, your spiritual education, your personal purification process, your prayer-time insights, your Christ-centered conversations with others – all these and more have been part of the preparation.

You are like the seed in today's Gospel reading. Life's circumstances have fertilized you, watered you, tilled your soil. And over time, the seed sprouted, the plant grew, and the flowers began to produce good fruit.

Every day, we all encounter small and sometimes large opportunities to serve the kingdom of God. We don't have to be full-time volunteers nor paid employees of the Church to work for God. He touches the world through us in our homes, our workplaces, our parishes, in the grocery store, in the traffic tie-ups, on the Internet, and everywhere we go.

Have any of your seeds sprouted into a tree that withered from neglect or got chopped down by others? This happens to all of us. The good news is: In every dead tree at least one fruit remains, shriveled up and barely hanging from a lifeless branch, but secretly holding a very valuable seed.

We are to take those ugly, dead fruits and plant them in the freshly tilled soil of today. New life most assuredly will break through the ground. A new tree will grow and it will become taller and stronger and more abundantly fruitful than the tree from which it came, because the decay from the original tree is now additional fertilizer for the soil.

For example, these Daily Reflections would never have started if not for the destruction of the first Good News Ministries tree due to our chaplain's inappropriate behavior and addictions. While seeking a new field to seed (in 1999), I began to share my thoughts about the readings from Mass with a few friends via email. This sapling tree has grown into a sturdy ministry of 14,000 subscribers and uncountable readers of forwarded reflections that subscribers share with others. And that's only one of the ways that the Good News Ministries orchard has grown and is still multiplying. See what new growth is being planned, at http://gnm.org/donate.htm.

In everything that happens to you today, remember: You have good fruits to share; God has been nurturing their growth. You ARE ready!

© 2010 by Terry A. Modica
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