The second miracle we see Jesus perform is the healing of the synagogue official, Jairus’ daughter with the instruction: “do not be afraid; just have faith”. With the Lord we never have to fear because with faith we have the ability to know that our God will take care of all things even when at times it's not how we would have wanted Him to. I'm sure Jairus would have preferred if his daughter never had gotten so ill or was never pronounced dead, but Jesus shows He is in control of all things by healing this girl- “Talitha koum–Little girl, I say to you arise!” So maybe none of us are physically dead, but what are the things we need to arise from that are holding us back from being fully alive?

Today's reading is a good reminder that God is so much bigger than we think. He's bigger than our lives, our families, our city, this year of 2024 - He's bigger than the wind and the weather! Let us take this opportunity to renew our trust in the Lord. That even when we don't see a way out of a difficult situation, God is bigger than that situation and He will surprise us.

In both of the examples of the scattered seeds and the mustard seed, the Lord seems to be telling us that the Kingdom of God grows in a mysterious way that we cannot control. The Lord needs us to scatter the seed, which is the “Good News” of his salvation. But we can rest assured that while we are “sleeping,” he will bring about the growth, both in our own lives as well as in the lives of others. This is what the Church refers to as grace. 

Look at the radical differences in people’s response to Jesus. Some are scandalized and explain his actions as insanity, some reject him and say that he is acting as the devil, and finally some believe in Jesus, and are willing to navigate the chaos and impoliteness in order to find him, in order to see him, in order to maybe even touch him. Notice how everyone in the story had some type of radical response to Jesus. No one was mentioned as having just walked away uninterested.

Have you ever felt such a profound affection for someone that you want to just eat them up? Have you ever loved someone so deeply, so completely, that you want there to be absolutely no space or distance between the two of you? That is how God loves us! Jesus looks at each one of us with such an all-consuming depth of love that he says “Take and eat, this is my body and blood, given for you.”