parables from mark 4

The key to interpreting most allegories [i.e., parables] lies in recognizing what a small handful of characters, actions or symbols correspond to and then fitting the rest of the story in with them.

Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message. To see all that is offered us at the windows of the soul, and to reach out and rece...

Rabbis spoke of parables as handles for understanding Torah; before parables no one understood the Torah, but when Solomon and others created parables, then people understood.

The question for each parable is: How did Jesus seek to change attitudes and behaviors with this parable?

Parables were the means Jesus used most frequently to explain the kingdom of God and to show the character of God and the expectations that God has for humans.

Stories are inherently interesting. Discourse we tolerate; to story we attend. Story entertains, informs, involves, motivates, authenticates, and mirrors existence. By creating a narrative world, stor...

Parables are chisels to create space and enable people to see and understand the in-breaking of the kingdom in a first-century world.

Glimpses of God’s Kingdom In these parables, Jesus provides two glimpses of God’s Kingdom: the slow growth of a seed into a stalk of wheat and the growth of a humble mustard seed. Both of Jesus’ para...

If we only had eyes to see and ears to hear and wits to understand, we would know that the Kingdom of God in the sense of holiness, goodness, beauty is as close as breathing and is crying out to born ...

Glimpses of God’s Kingdom In these parables, Jesus provides two glimpses of God’s Kingdom: the slow growth of a seed into a stalk of wheat and the growth of a humble mustard seed. Both of Jesus’ para...

The Parable is a form of speech that has a style all of its own. It is a way of saying something that requires the imaginative participation of the listener. Inconspicuously, even surreptitiously, a p...

The child became a man and the man became a preacher whose sermons were full of commonplace things: seeds and nets, coins and fishes, lilies of the field, and birds of the air. Wherever he was, he had...

The thrust of the parables is to subvert the distorted myths in which people live their lives. To understand what we mean by “living in a myth” just think of a couple of our own contemporary myths. Ta...