The Bible effectively created European civilization and so, influenced the rest of the world. Many people who are not Christians and who have never read the Bible know many of the sayings contained in it. "You can tell a tree by its fruit" is one such example. Jesus' simple saying has become a criterion for judgement in many diverse situations. The power of many of Jesus' words lies in their simplicity and in their resonance with our ordinary human experience. Jesus so often taught us to learn about God and about the meaning of our own existence by appealing to the most ordinary experiences. He spoke to us of the common experience of loss: losing a sheep, a coin, a son. He spoke to us of the experience of trying to forecast the weather. Reminding us of the ways in which we read the sky to tell the weather, Jesus challenged us to read the signs of the times. In today's Gospel, He calls upon us to learn from nature how to read the significance of our actions, the quality of our moral life, our life of faith. While the simplicity of Jesus' teaching can sometimes be quite disconcerting, it is that simplicity which makes His wisdom perennial.