Mark 4.26-34
In the end the parables are stories that Jesus tells about himself. He is the Good Shepherd off in search of the lost, he is the fatted calf sacrificed for the party, on and on. And the branches of his kingdom are a place of grace for everyone.
Grace, as Frederick Buechner was apt to say, is something you can never get but only be given. There’s no way to earn it, or deserve it, or bring it about, anymore than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream, or earn good looks, or bring about your own birth. And a crucial eccentricity to our faith is that we are saved by grace, by God’s action toward us in the person of Jesus Christ. There’s nothing *you* have to do, there’s nothing you *have* to do, there’s nothing you have to *do*.
Which means grace might seem like a small thing, but Jesus does a lot with a little...
