Poets & Saints

← Poets & Saints1 oct. · 5 min

Like a Time Bomb

Like a Time Bomb1 oct.5 min

ScriptureLuke 8:9–10 (NRSVUE)

Then his disciples asked him

what this parable meant.

He said, "To you it has been given

to know the secrets of the kingdom of God;

but to others I speak in parables,

so that 'looking they may not perceive,

and hearing they may not understand.'"

RefrainThe story is working in me before I understand it.

QuoteEugene Peterson, from The Contemplative Pastor

"Jesus' favorite speech form, the parable, was subversive. Parables sound absolutely ordinary: casual stories about soil and seeds, meals and coins and sheep, bandits and victims, farmers and merchants. And they are wholly secular. As people heard Jesus tell these stories, they saw at once that they weren't about God, so there was nothing in them threatening their own sovereignty. They relaxed their defenses. They walked away perplexed, wondering what they meant, the stories lodged in their imagination. And then, like a time bomb, they would explode in their unprotected hearts."

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