The kingdom of heaven is like ...

He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."

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I know that yeast is most often a symbol for sin and corruption and stuff. I think that verse above speaks to that. I've heard it said that the three measures of flour is symbolic of something else, too. It makes me wonder, though - why would the kingdom of heaven be likened to something bad? I don't understand this verse very well.

There are more than one type of yeast, after all. The stuff that we are subjected to in the standard Western diet is the variety that has no nutritional benefit. How about that? Who would have thought? In the great dietary conference in the sky, everyone from history will look aghast at those Westerners who were so rich, and who, in the name of greater agricultural and financial yields, ate foods so many of which had been stripped of any benefit at all.

I take brewer's yeast, the kind you find in beer. It's actually good for you. It contains saccyromycees bacteria, and they're of the good variety that like living in your gut and killing off the more unfriendly forms. So not all yeast is bad.

But whatever Jesus was intending to say here, I am pretty sure that the kingdom spreads like a virus. My latest email update from Paul Young, author of The Shack, says that his book is approaching the 200,000 sales mark. This is from a spend on marketing and promotion of 200-300 bucks. Astounding. Unheard of. Completely and utterly the kind of thing that I imagine is going on all the time around the world. Kingdom stuff.

Not equating The Shack into the realm of the Word of God spoken (although I absolutely think that God speaks and has spoken through that book). I mention the book because it's an indication of how I think the kingdom works. It doesn't need money and power to do its job. We think it does, but that's just man's version which isn't nearly as free and pretty as the King's version.

God's kingdom spreads through the most everyday of people, blotchy people with unresolved sin issues. A grace-filled kingdom where we share in the spoils of the King he just loves us that much. A kingdom of us, where he is growing us into people who are safer and safer to be around each other

Just imagine that.