Today, for the feast of Saints Timothy and Titus, the Epistle at Mass included St. Paul’s charge to Timothy:
“God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control.”
This verse is a perfect companion for today’s Gospel when Jesus compares the Kingdom of God to a mustard seed. It’s a picture of how we can our fears.
When we teach children about the biblical parable of the mustard seed, we show it to our children to inspire their imagination. The seed is smaller than a pinhead, but somehow it becomes a big tree.
If we’re part of building the Kingdom of God, then this dynamic will play out in our lives. Somehow, we are called to go from point A to point B to fulfill a goal or a calling, and like the growth of the mustard seed, we won’t know how to get there.
What happens? Fear. The thought is, “I don’t know how I can do that.” Paul says that God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but that doesn’t mean the fear goes away. Quite the opposite. If we’re not timid, then we face fear, because the spirit that God gave us is even greater.
We feel small like a mustard seed, but as part of God’s kingdom-building, we’re called to grow. This means, as the writer Seth Godin put it, we’re called to dance with fear. We don’t shrink from it because it cannot defeat us. The spirit of God, the spirit of power and of love and of self-control, is greater.
And so, like the mustard seed, we miraculously go from point A to point B. The seed grows into a tree as we step forward, and we become part of the building of the Kingdom of God.