The fragment is torn and hard to read. In the first line Jesus is talking but we cannot make out what he's saying: too many letters are missing from too many words to conjecture a restoration. It's as if we were too far back to hear well. We catch some words. He is saying something about putting things in a dark and secret place. He says something about weighing things that are weightless. The people who can hear him are puzzled and look to each other, some with apologetic smiles, for help in understanding. Then Jesus, also smiling, steps to the very edge of the river, as if to show them something. He leans over the river, one arm reaching out. His cupped hand is full of seeds. They had not noticed a handful of seeds before. He throws the seeds into the river. Trees, first as sprouts, then as seedlings, then as trees fully grown, grew in the river as quickly as one heartbeat follows another.
