Dear Ted

 Dear Ted 

Dear Ted: My ex and I were talking about . . . . - Just thinking

Just thinking? No, not thinking at all: you’re pretty much nuts, aren’t you - but so are we all. The best thing, if you don’t know what to do, is live and let live.  Leave complete madness to the tellers of tales, proclamations of vengeance to the prophets, and passive-aggressive grace to God.

Dear Ted: My mother-in-law thinks that we ought to. . . . - In a stew

In a stew? You surely are. You’re pretty much nuts, aren’t you - but so are we all. The best thing, if you don’t know what to do, is live and let live. Leave complete madness to the tellers of tales, proclamations of vengeance to the prophets, and passive-aggressive grace God.

* * * *

For:

     The kingdom of God - is it like this? (“The Parable of the Prophet and the Tree” To listen, click here.)

A prophet of God turned a people from their evil ways, and God changed his mind about the disaster he had said he would bring upon their city, the catastrophe that the prophet promised them if they did not repent. And the prophet, who hated the people he’d been sent to, became angry and began yelling at God, saying, “I knew you were going to do this. It’s why I asked you not to send me.” He said much more not to be repeated. And the prophet took to his bed, hoping to die.

     But he found he had not given up hope for destruction, so he went out of the city, where he could watch it: Maybe God would change his mind again, and the people he hated would be destroyed after all. He sat in the shade of a tree, growing from a mustard seed. He watched.

He watched until nightfall, and nothing happened. And at dawn the next morning, he looked again, but nothing had happened to the evil city. The tree though, that had given him shade and cover to sleep under, was groaning and shrinking, and it kept shrinking until it was nothing but a stick in the ground.

     As the sun grew in the sky, the tree shrunk into the ground. And by noon the sun beat down on the prophet, still angry that it didn’t beat down - and burn! - the city. And the prophet said to God, “I wish I were dead.”

     “Because of the tree?” God asked.

     “Chuck the tree!” the prophet said, only he didn’t say “chuck.” And he added, “Chuck the Ninevites, and chuck you!”

And the stick that had been the tree that had grown from the mustard seed began to swell.

Is the kingdom of God like this?

09.22.17

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For more parables and podge-hodge from the Ted Riich version, see here.