Paul challenges us to be aware that all that God has created is waiting for the fullness of God's reign. The non-human dimensions of creation are awaiting the work of salvation that God has given to the human community to participate in. This insight is one of the critical foundations of the growing appreciation in Christian theology of the importance of caring for creation in this stage of the Kingdom's development - for all of creation is "waiting in joyful hope" for the fullness of God's reign.

The Gospel today reminds us that God plants the seed of the Kingdom in the soil of our human hearts, and invites us to wait patiently for its growth into maturity. It is God who is working, labouring behind the scenes in so many ways. His kingdom will come. His will surely will be done. Above all we are called to hope. In the midst of the growing darkness, both physical and socio-political, with the impasses of war, poverty, political wrangling and a host of other human intransigencies, we cannot see the work of God's reign growing and coming to fullness. Let us be instruments of God's justice for everyone on the margins.