If you had ventured a guess about the future of Jesus' kingdom two thirds of the way through his ministry, how optimistic would you have been?

He grew up in a despised province of the Roman Empire. He was born before his mother's marriage had become official. He did not appear publicly until he was thirty years old, and then he spent most of his ministry time in the commercialized and more heathen northern Israel, away from the religious power center in Jerusalem. After two years he'd gathered a dozen unimpressive disciples and gained a few converts, mostly among the poor and the unlearned. During the last year of his public life he generated such passionate opposition from both the moneyed aristocracy and from religious fundamentalists that they joined forces-an unlikely alliance!-to have him painfully, shamefully executed.

Who would ever predict that from such bleak beginnings a great kingdom would grow?  Jesus did. "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches."