In the book called How to Do Things With Words , the author claims words don't simply describe things, they make things happen. When it comes to words that create worlds, there is no better example than Jesus’ parables. In these brief, simple stories, Jesus doesn’t just relate information to us about God or about heaven. He’s calling a new reality into being. These stories don’t just describe the new order God is bringing to earth, as much as they cause it to come to lif

Whenever I see a weed, it just seems to scream, “Pull me!” When Jesus tells stories about farming, his stories simply don’t make any agricultural sense. Listen to the story again - A farmer plows his field, sows it with wheat of the highest quality, and goes to bed that night. While he was sleeping an enemy comes and lays some weed seed in the same furrows. So as the wheat starts to grow, the farmer's hired hands notice the weed growing with the wheat and ask the farmer

Rarely did Jesus say things bluntly or straightforwardly. More often than not, he came at a truth indirectly, sideways-like, in order to come in under our defenses and around our prejudices. His best tools in this were his “parables.” In them, Jesus takes images drawn from familiar things and uses them a new way, to explain God’s Kingdom. It’s to our benefit then that Jesus’ first parable is such an easy one to understand. The story begins with a man who goes forth to s