Maybe I should have called this
The Popcorn Parables

Part 1 was my inspiration, while part two comes in part from my good friend Wayne (actually most of it was his idea).

Thursday morning Barb cooked us up another great batch of that bacon-fried popcorn. This had all kinds of little bits and pieces of bacon in the grease. The picture on the left shows what happens once you finish the popped corn. It doesn’t look all that appetizing. You might even be tempted to throw it away. The Kingdom of heaven is like the bottom of a popcorn bowl. It would have been a real shame to throw out what was left in the bottom of this bowl, because there was all kinds of good stuff on the bottom, most of it was little bits and pieces of bacon and little bits of partially popped popcorn. (how’s that for illiteration.) If Wayne and I would have thrown out this bowl of popcorn we would have missed the best part. “So what’s that have to do with the Kingdom of heaven?” you ask.

What about the people that we meet each day who look beaten up and used like the pieces at the bottom of this bowl? Are we tempted just to throw them away because they seem insignificant? I know that to some people the investment we make in Mosaic doesn’t seem worth the cost. Maybe they think that we should just throw it away. What I find however is that there are some real gems (some real pieces of bacon) hiding away. I’ve even found that in the church. Some are willing to give up on someone because they are insignificant — perhaps they’re antagonistic toward the gospel or worse. In my experience, we are too quick to want to throw them away — to marginalize them as not worth our time and yet, it is these little, seemingly insignificant pieces of bacon, when invested in are not insignificant at all and play a big part in building the Kingdom.

So, the next time you seem someone you think is insignificant, remember the bottom of a bowl of bacon-fried popcorn. Carp Diem!