By Russ Johnson
Life is hard.
Relationships go sideways. Our bodies stop cooperating. The thing we worked for doesn't happen. We lose something we thought was secure.
And the world doesn't help.
Every scroll brings another reason to believe things are coming apart faster than anyone can put them back together. Underneath it all hums a low, steady anxiety we've learned to call normal.
So we reach for familiar ways to measure where we stand and manage what happens next.
Jesus had an annoying habit of refusing to cooperate.
When people wanted answers, he told stories.
Farmers lavishly throwing seed on rocks and roads. Women tearing apart the house for a coin, then throwing a party that cost more than the coin. Shepherds making terrible business decisions because one lost sheep still belongs to them.
Terrible economics. Questionable agriculture. No leadership principles whatsoever.
Jesus called them parables.
And if modern sermons are curated presentations designed to clarify, parables do something almost exactly opposite.
They make things worse.
They don't tidy up our theological messes. They pull the rug out from under what we were certain we understood and leave us standing there holding the rug.
Take the story of the father and his two sons (Luke 15:11–32). You may have already watched us unpack it on the Lark website. If not, you can watch it here.
One broke every rule, blew everything he'd been given, and was sure he'd lost his place in the family. The other kept every rule and resented anyone who didn't. And the father went out to meet them both.
One needed to discover that his failures hadn't destroyed his belonging. The other needed to discover that his faithfulness hadn't secured it.
Different lives. Same misunderstanding about their father.
And that's where the story gets uncomfortable.
Because most of us have spent our lives doing some version of what those boys were doing. Trying to be good enough, successful enough, faithful enough, or at least better than somebody else.
Even with God.
We hear that he loves us, then spend Tuesday trying to make sure he still does. And if you've spent your life believing your belonging depends on you, a father who loves like this can be surprisingly difficult to trust.
Which raises a perfectly reasonable question: Why didn't Jesus just explain all this?
The disciples wondered something similar: “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” (Matt. 13:10)
Which is basically: Jesus, have you considered being less confusing?
His answer didn't help much.
“The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them…. Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.” (Matt. 13:11, 13)
Well. Glad we cleared that up.
Except Jesus was doing something far more interesting than withholding information. He was exposing what people were already sure of.
Because the greatest obstacle to seeing something new isn't always ignorance. Sometimes it's certainty.
We already have categories.
God. Sin. Law. Grace. Faith. Holiness. Judgment.
We hear those words, and before Jesus finishes the sentence, we already know what they mean.
Which is precisely why a definition sometimes won't do.
A definition can be filed away. A story gets under the door.
It lets you nod along until somewhere near the end you realize the villain looks suspiciously like you, the hero isn't behaving the way heroes are supposed to behave, and God apparently hasn't read the same theology books you have.
That's what parables do.
They don't merely give us new information. They expose the assumptions we brought with us. Which is why Jesus said, “Consider carefully what you hear” (Mark 4:24).
Because Jesus wasn't trying to keep God hidden.
He said, “Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don't you put it on its stand? For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed” (Mark 4:21–22).
The mystery isn't meant to remain a mystery. The hidden thing is meant to be seen. And the one making the Father visible was standing right in front of them.
Jesus.
We don't come to him with a blank slate. We bring the God we already had in mind.
And if we get the Father wrong, everything downstream—sin, grace, faith, judgment, growth, forgiveness, church—starts bending with it.
That's why we're beginning here.
Over the next two weeks, we'll revisit some familiar questions and discover what changes when we see them in the light of the Father Jesus revealed.
Not to give you fourteen more things to get right. But because hearing that you belong and learning to live like it aren't the same thing.
The disciples didn't see everything at once. Neither do we.
So stay curious. Consider carefully what you hear. And don't be surprised when something you've always been certain of turns out to look very different in the light.
Because the question isn't how much you know about God. It's whether you've learned to trust the Father Jesus revealed in the life you already have.