Growth

Oh, no! A tissue got left in a  pocket, and now I had white bits of it stuck to everything in the load of colored clothes!  I hate when that happens!  I knew a lot of it would come off in the dryer, but just in case, I painstakingly picked every shred of it off the garments.  Of particular concern was a new, dark knit shirt that my husband likes. It was covered in what looked to be lint! I was thankfully surprised
when the clothes came out with nothing on them, with only pieces of tissue floating around like feathers in the dryer.

Making dinner later, I needed an onion for the stuffed peppers I was planning.  I opened the top door of the vegetable bin to retrieve one from behind the heart-shaped, screened opening and was met with a swarm of gnats!  Or tiny fruit flies! The culprit was a soft onion in the bottom of the mesh onion bag. If I hadn't found it, the whole bag might have been ruined!

These incidents remind me of sin! If one keeps company with the wrong kind of people, before long, he becomes like them! Their sinful practices rub off and stick to him!  Before long, sin has infected a life.  Jesus said in I Corinthians 5:6, "Know ye not that a little leaven leaventh the whole lump?"  Leaven is another word for yeast, and here it is used as a symbol of impurity.

I remember my mother using yeast to make bread or yeast rolls. It smelled so delicious as she was dissolving it in the water, and the aroma of the bread was intoxicating! Temptations to do wrong can be that way, especially to a young, vulnerable Christian. 

However, leaven can be used as an illustration for good! In another place, Jesus uses it as an example of the spread of the gospel! "Another parable Jesus spake ye unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three  measures of meal, till the whole was leavened." Matthew 12:33.

When the yeast bubbled in the bowl, Mama knew it would make the bread and rolls rise and double in size.  When the word of God is released from our mouths or pulpits, it will do its job. "So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." Isaiah 55:11

That word of witness you speak, that little tract you leave,  will prosper and grow in someone's heart!  It is so beautiful to see the statistics of how the gospel of Christianity is spreading around the world!

The boy Samuel responded to the voice of God by saying, "Here am I." Verse 19 of I Samuel 3 says of him, "And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground."  None of his words failed to be fulfilled.  Neither will the words of the Lord!