Skip to content
Duke Divinity
See information for:  Students  |  Faculty  |  Staff  |  Alumni
News
Send this page Send this page
Print this page Print this page

The Mustard Seed

By Kent Dunnington
M.Div. 2007

May 26, 2005

I've been in Jackson a little over a week now. If it is true, as I have been told, that you see a place most clearly during your first and last week there, then Jackson – at least the parts that I live in and around – is a bleak place. My most persistent reaction to the neighborhood during my first week here was despair. It is a ‘hood,’ with all of the typical markers. I struggle to believe that it could ever be otherwise than it now is, so pervasive is the decay, so rampant the despondency, so overpowering the addiction.

Kent Dunnington
Of course, as a Christian, one knows that everything turns on which set of eyes one is looking through – the eyes of “the world” or the eyes of “faith.” The constant struggle during my first week here has been to see the world through Jesus’ eyes. I have failed for the most part. It is one thing to imagine carrying out the mandate of Matthew 25. I usually imagine little orphan children, or a polite and clean man who has simply fallen on hard times. But when the poor and the hungry are standing in front of you, it is a battle to see Christ in them. They’re often stinky, dirty, ugly. Many of them are crude, many of them conniving, many of them lazy. But scripture tells us that insofar as they are “the least of these” (and who could argue this?) they are Jesus. Lord, help my unbelief!

I have taken comfort in the parable of the mustard seed this past week. Even the smallest seed can grow into a tree for the birds to rest in. I have seen seeds of faith and hope planted in this field of despondency and despair: a racially reconciled softball team that I've been invited to play on; a Rev. Ed King literally scarred for his faithfulness to the gospel during the civil rights movement; a Galloway UMC janitor named Robert whom God rescued from the pit of crack addiction and who now proclaims The Way to anyone who will listen.

My prayer is that God will continue to convince me that he rules the world from a cross. I need eyes to see.

< Mississippi Learning    |    Week 2 >