Mark 4:26-29- I Want It All, I Want It Now

And He was saying, "The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows— how, he himself does not know. The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come."

The coming of God’s promises to the earth was thought by many Jewish schools to be quick, immediate and world changing. There were other groups of Yahwists (worshipers of Yahweh) called Zealots who believed that it is the Yahwists who would enact the kingdom coming by their own violent, revolutionary action. In this parable, Jesus speaks against both of these misconceptions of the kingdom of God. He compares the coming of God’s nation to be like the planting of a seed. First of all, the seed grows gradually, not immediately. Secondly, the one who plants the seed does not know how it grows—he doesn’t do it himself, but is passive in the process of it growing. But once it is full grown, the man who planted the seed takes possession of the fruit of it, even though he had little to do with the growing of it. Even so, the kingdom of God begins with the teaching of God’s word, and people over a long time listen to it and accept it and join God’s kingdom. And no one except God knows how the kingdom grows or how it grows. But those who participate in the teaching of the word will take possession of the kingdom when it is finished. Joel 4:13

The hardest thing in the world is to wait for justice. When you are living in an unjust situation for years, all you want to do is to change it immediately. God promises justice, but he doesn't promise it quickly. I am not saying that we need to wait for the government to grant justice, because people have been waiting thousands of years to have a just government. But if we attempt to force justice ourselves, even if we succeed, all we do is to force on others a different form of injustice.

The most powerful tool for justice is prayer. Prayer requires patience, but it does the job. And through prayer the greatest changes the world has ever known have been accomplished.