Sunday, July 13, 2014

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

We are creatures of such stunningly limited vision. I was reminded of this truth in an unexpected way this weekend. LeBron James' decision to return home to Ohio was a jolt to our conventional wisdom. As one sportswriter, who four years ago referred to James as the "King of Crass", wrote yesterday, "Few actually believed he would pick Cleveland. How can spending four years as the leader of a renowned sports circus actually make an athlete more grounded?" In other words, few saw Miami as rich soil, and yet it seems like it was. Perhaps more significantly, many questioned whether James himself was rich soil, and now they are rejoicing at being proven wrong. But what if James had made a different choice? Would that have spoken more to the quality of his soil or our vision? How often do we misjudge the ground upon which our Parent has sown their seed? "My word shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it." We are a product of that word. And there is not a single one of us who is not rich soil. Each of us will produce the fruit that God desires, even if that means "groaning in labor pains" for generation after generation. So let us "shout and sing for joy", for never has there been a harvest more wonderful that this.