This past Sunday morning, walking through the Children’s Sunday School area, I stopped by a classroom where the children were learning about the colors of the rainbow by blowing bubbles in a huge bowl filled with detergent.  They offered me a straw.  Blowing bubbles, I was reminded of how life is rarely black and white and is more often beautifully multi-colored.  Now and then, though, when life gets mysterious and murky, we want clear, simple hope.  Which is what six-year-old Kristen Anderson wanted when she followed me as I got ready to leave and asked, “Does Jesus take care of babies when they die?”  A question we all asked again Tuesday when they found Samantha Runnion’s body.  Anyway, by now, I’m on bended knee in front of Kristen, the gravity of her question literally pulling me to her level.  Questions always have stories behind them.  I knew Kristen needed to tell me a story as much as she needed my answer.

When I asked Kristen what baby she was thinking about she said, “my cousin, Courtney.”  She then recounted how baby Courtney had just stopped breathing one day in early March (adults call it SIDS).  “How old was Courtney?” I asked.  Looking a little confused, Kristen simply said, “She wasn’t a number, yet.”  Somehow or another, I pushed enough air over the lump in my throat to answer her question.  “Of course, Courtney is in heaven with Jesus,” I told her.  “Jesus takes care of people who aren’t numbers, yet.”  With Jesus, everybody counts.

Monday morning, when I was getting ready for today’s message, I read Jesus’ words and was startled at their relevance.  Sunday, Kristen had asked if Jesus takes care of people who aren’t numbers yet.  Monday morning, Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it is grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”  In God’s eternal kingdom, Jesus said, there is no such thing as insignificant.

Here’s the problem.  We can’t even begin to grasp the magnitude of God’s kingdom any more than we can understand what it means to travel millions of light years and not even come close to the edge of the universe.  When Jesus was trying to help us understand the incomprehensible he often said, “It’s like.”  Then getting one-kneed on our level he’d tell a story from the world we see to help us understand the world we cannot see.  The kingdom of God is like a farmer sowing seed (Matthew 13:24) or it is like a priceless treasure buried in a field (Matthew 13:44) or it is like a merchant looking for the finest pearls (Matthew 13:45) or it is like a fisherman’s net let down into the water that catches all kinds of fish (Matthew 13:47).  No one of those parables tells the whole story anymore than one color describes a rainbow.  But, together, they help us see something that is otherwise invisible.  When Jesus wanted to helps us see the invisibly eternal world, he used the visibly touchable world we live in.  He told parables, stories that packaged eternal truth in temporal experience.

One Christmas I opened a Christmas gift from an in-law only to find a gift card to her from the person who had originally given her the gift.  Obviously, when she first opened it the year before, she had decided she didn’t want it and didn’t even look closely enough to see the gift card.  She decided she could save some money by just passing it along to an unwitting in-law.  Though I’ve laughed about it over the years, I can’t even remember what the gift was because of the way it came to me.  And, I haven’t forgotten the lessons that came with the gift.  Whatever gifts we give others were given to us first by someone else; we don’t own anything, we only get to pass it along.  And, when we do give our gifts to others, we should be careful we package them so those receiving them can appreciate their meaning.

Jesus made it clear that everything he had came from his heavenly Father (John 5:19-20).  When he went to pass along to us the gifts his Father had given him, he made certain to package them in ways we could appreciate.  He told parables.  Like the one about the mustard seed.  The one that says the kingdom of God is like something that begins so very small as to appear insignificant but eventually blossoms into something profound and significant. 

Some argue that parables have only one main point.  I’m not sure.  Like the colors of the rainbow, truth is always multi-dimensional.  There may be one main issue Jesus was striving to communicate in any given parable, but there are many different ways of seeing, understanding and applying it.  This is at least part of what the parable of the mustard seed means.  What God is up to, at any given time, may be all but invisible to our eyes, to the point of seeming insignificance.  But, in the person of Christ, God has planted his kingdom in this world.  In time, that seed will produce its fruit.  In terms of what God is ultimately up to, there is no such thing as insignificant.  If you want to know what God is ultimately up to, all you to do is look for the seeds he has planted.  Kingdom people live for the long haul.  They don’t measure the significance of what they are doing only in terms of its immediate affect.  They live and tell the truth believing that, in time, the truth always bears eternal fruit, not necessarily immediately evident results.

I’m in one of those sentimental, raw-nerve moments as a parent right now.  I’m not sure but what I just live there permanently.  But, Griffin got his license about three months ago and had since gotten his first job.  Anymore, he just stops by now and then to say hi.  And, since he can chauffer Cameron around now, I see less and less of both of them.  For sixteen years, parenting was something I could see.  It was very visible, right in front of my eyes.  Now, it’s something I have to just trust, because it’s getting harder to see.  I’ve been in a reflective mood.  Occasionally, I ask Nancy for reassurance.  “Have I been a good father?”  Sometimes it’s difficult for her to say, depending on how well they’ve cleaned their room when they did stop by.  But, when she wants to help me, she points to the seeds I’ve planted in their lives and encourages me to believe in the fruit of character those seeds will produce in time. 

The seeds of praying with them every night and bringing and going with them to church to worship God.  The seeds of letting them see me treat my wife with respect, gentleness and kindness and trying my very best to model what a Christian marriage should be like and how men should treat women.  The seeds of being a good steward of God’s gift of a job by going to work and trying to do it well.  The seeds of saying I was sorry when I was the one was wrong.  The seeds of letting them see my laugh when life gets too stressful and even cry when it overwhelms me.  The seeds of letting them see and hear me read God’s word for wisdom that doesn’t come naturally.  Not least of all, the seeds of telling them every single day, “I love you.”  In short, planting the seeds of God’s kingdom as I understand Christ to have given them to me.  Planting those seeds and working them into their hearts and souls like a baker kneads yeast into her dough in the simple faith that, even when I am no longer with them, those seeds, nurtured by God’s Holy Spirit, will in time bear kingdom fruit in their lives, too.  No question, they will have some weeds to pull.  But, I’m banking on the good seed. 

Our children will feast, for better or worse, on the gardens that grow in their lives from the seeds we parents planted in their lives, one at a time, from the very first moment we held them and the very time we spoke their name.  Seeds like Kathy Anderson planted in Kristen’s life the day before our Courtney conversation.  Pulling weeds in their yard, Kristen began asking her mom about God.  Even as they pulled the weeds in the yard of their home, Kathy planted kingdom seeds in Kristen’s heart.  Even Kristen’s questions were, themselves, the fruit of seeds her parents had already planted.  Every time we baptize one of our children, we can literally see the seed of faith some parent planted blossoming in the baptistery. 

More than once, Jesus also compared faith itself to a mustard seed (Matthew 17:20; Luke 17:6).  He told the disciples that, if their faith was just that big they could move mountains.  Jesus wasn’t interested in them rearranging his real estate.  What he was trying to say is that even a little faith makes a big difference because, when it comes to faith, it’s not the size that counts but its mere existence.  If you have faith at all, all the faith you’ll ever need has already been planted in you by the Holy Spirit just waiting for you to let it blossom.  It’s not how big our faith is but who our faith is in that matters most.  Even a little faith in Jesus is enough faith to save your soul.  When it comes to faith, there is no such thing as insignificant.  And, when it comes to the kingdom of God, it’s not our ability to measure its size now as much as our willingness to trust its mere presence.  If God has touched you at all, spoken one word to you, planted one seed of faith in his kingdom in you, you have the beginnings of eternal hope in your heart.  That seed is the promise of something unbelievably incredible God intends to do in you and through you for his kingdom’s sake. 

I’ve spent all week long thinking about Kristen’s question.  “Does Jesus take care of babies when they die, of people who aren’t numbers, yet?”  Even her very question betrayed her faith, the presence of the kingdom planted there long ago.  She was assuming that, if we get taken care of at all after we die, if we live on the other side of death, that only Jesus could take care of that.  What Kristen wanted was confirmation of what she already knew.  That, to Jesus, there is no such thing as insignificant.

Trusting that might not be the end of faith.  It is an awfully good place to start.  Jesus takes care of people who aren’t numbers, yet.  And, those who are many numbers.  To Jesus, there is no such thing, no such one, as insignificant.  Kristen knows that now. 

Do you?