It's hard to understand about 80% of the Bible if you don't live in an agricultural society, and do at least a little bit of growing things. And sometimes even the Bible makes it hard to understand what's going on.
Take Matthew 13:31-32: “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 has 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.”
Right. Great story. The Kingdom (or the realm of God, as I like to say) is a thing that grows. When we tell it in Godly Play with the kids, weroll up a piece of cloth and hide it in our hands and unroll it – it's shaped like a tree. The kingdom is like something small becomingbig.
uh-uh. We're missing a major part of the story, because, well, have you ever seen a mustard tree? GUESS WHAT – mustard is a weed.