A parable is not meant to offer a scientific model. A parable is a characterization of something that is alive on a level beyond what words can describe. So a parable is an invitation to explore something with your heart in hopes that your brain is obedient enough to implement some changes demanded by faith.
There is a very literal sense in which all Creation is alive. You will not be able to walk in the full power of the gospel message until you begin to respect Creation as an associate placed by God to assist you in discovering His glory. A part of you is the same stuff as the rest of Creation, but you cannot possibly gain all the benefits and blessings granted by His glory until you form a covenant relationship with Creation itself. It is alive with the moral character of God and He has endowed it with the power to respond to His glory, including His glory in you.
If I begin to make headway in the mission of making peace with God through making peace with His Creation, I am claiming some measure of my divine heritage. As a child of God, adopted through His literal Son Jesus Christ, there is a synergy on a level beyond words where I accept the things He as created and accept His revelation about those things. I cooperate as a child learning to love and conform to His image for me. I am laying claim to the things He set aside for me to use for His glory.
There is no concrete list of what that includes, but it means I can walk about in Creation and hear His voice in the song that registers on the ears of my soul. I can join in that song and celebrate my Father’s greatness. It also means that I learn what sort of stuff I should pray for and thus see my prayers more likely heard and answered. I am in a position to learn how something so clearly the best route to His glory yesterday is no longer the best I can discern today. I have gained in my capacity to respond and that opens doors that were previously invisible.
So for example, the bicycle I purchased in clear conscience three years ago is now not the best thing for my calling, so I begin to pray for a different bicycle. If you don’t see what I see, then you could decide it looks to you like boredom with old toys. That doesn’t hinder my prayer and my faith to believe. It’s not as if I’m seeking the highest priced carbon fiber racing bike, just something that fits into a different pattern of riding (though it will probably be more expensive than what I have now), a pattern that has to change because everything is alive and growing in my soul. Meanwhile, I keep plugging along because I learned long ago that my sense of timing is tied to my fallen flesh, and God’s sense of timing is incomprehensible at best, and certainly different from mine.
So it goes with a lot of things in my life. When I began to pray about getting a tower and some better networking hardware, that stuff happened way faster than I expected. And recently there were some changes in my perception about what made that hardware important for His mission in my life. Then again, some things I sincerely longed for a couple of years ago now horrify me. But if the prayer for those things presumed that it was not so important in itself, but simply the best I knew at the time, then my underlying request of God was for a better understanding.
Cycling has remained important in my calling since before I knew I was called. Somehow I sense that won’t change until I am simply unable to do it, but I consider it something I could drop without whining. I loved running far more, and whined about losing it, but I can tell you it’s gone forever — in this body, at least. I can tell that it still feels like a really big hole in my soul that I can’t run any more. Not everything I long for is what God has in mind, but there is no sense of condemnation about it either way. A major element in my sense of peace is realizing that some things simply defy my grasp this side of Eternity.
My dominion from His hand is limited. But that dominion itself is a living thing. I have to tend it like a valuable steed, because the underlying truth is that it is a living thread of the covenant with my Lord. And as you probably realize by now, that divine calling includes trying to help you, dear reader, to find your own heritage from the Father.
Sometimes the things I offer require that you submit in some measure to my dominion. That’s not my rules; that’s the fundamental nature of things. I can’t extend His authority in me beyond the boundaries of the feudal assignment He grants. By the same token, pulling you into my domain requires I surrender some of my prerogatives. You become a burden of care and I bear a major responsibility to Him for that. In other words, we embrace a covenant of shared dominion. But in the end, I’ll be far richer for it, so I do it gladly. I can only assume you’ll be richer, too. His glory shines brighter because it feeds on such things.
His glory is a living thing, too. It’s blasphemy on some level to act as if any part of our world is inert, or that it reacts only on a mechanical level. Faith literally changes your wiring so that your body works differently. When you focus your conscious awareness on living from the heart, it opens a wealth of living power to change your very literal existence.
While you might be tempted at first to anthropomorphize the stuff in your life, that’s a perversion of the real deal. You can’t fuss at your shoes as if they were impetuous children. Try to keep in mind that the world around you isn’t fallen; you are. Still, it’s no mistake to imagine that your shoes are alive on some level simply because all matter is. However, you are far more likely to experience fellowship and communion of worship with stuff that is more obviously alive and not made by human hands. Parables help to train your brain to cooperate with your heart.
