Mark 4:27

and then sleeps by night and rises by day, while the seed is shooting up and growing – he knows not how.


having done due diligence
we sleep innocent assured
with a good tired
trusting an embryonic emergence
with endospermic reserves
in an East Edenic locale

we too rest between sweaty seasons
plant hoe reap feast
filled with static tree knowledge
never quite sufficient
to explain this very day
in paradise’s flux

in this time of time
we wonder what wondering
fishers and herders do
in their time between
how many sides trust has
and which we share


Some cultures and languages count time from day to night and some from night to day. Whether we go from dream vision to implementation or expending gifts to recuperation and re-creation, a presence of and partnership with G*D deepens in its own time.

Note that this creation-centered growth simply occurs. It would be easy to turn this into an ultra-providential understanding that ends us in one version or another of a false prosperity gospel—say your prayer and send in your donation, go to sleep, awaken to notice that you won the lottery without having to buy a ticket.

Listen to Myers and Company: “…Jesus is not advocating passivity but reasserting the divine economy of grace.” At the end of their paragraph there is a foretaste of Chapter 13: “Mark will have more to say about ‘revolutionary patience” in the apocalyptic parables of Jesus’ second sermon (13:28f).”

Listen to Harry Chapin talk about his grandfather’s wisdom (https://youtu.be/NaoXYsWeIMI):

Harry, there are two kinds of tired: there’s good-tired, and there’s bad-tired. He said, ‘Ironically enough, bad-tired can be a day that you won. But you won other people’s battles, you lived other people’s days, … and when it was all over there was very little “you” in there, and when you hit the hay at night, somehow you toss and turn—you don’t settle easy…. Good-tired, ironically enough, can be a day that you lost. But you … knew you fought your battles, you chased your dreams, you lived your days, and when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy….