A Dirty Story

The Parable of the Sower is a story about what is, with perhaps a little of what should be thrown in.  Jesus is certainly the sower of His seeds, His words, which should grow in us and others.  And we should imitate Him, also sowing His word.  And where that seed lands, well, He describes different types of soil, one of which probably describes us.  While this tale of what happens when He (or we) sow His word is true, it is also true that this is only a snapshot of, an incident, in the bigger story --- what happens next.

For the seed that hits the good soil, the story is only starting, kind of like the “I do” vow starts a marriage.  Then comes growth --- furthered along by continued care --- and a reaching of greater spiritual maturity.  But that isn’t the end of the story either, for from the good tree comes fruit, which feeds others in their growth, or falls to the ground to start other new growths.  As Jesus said, if the tree bears no fruit, you might as well cut it down.  The point of the seed being sown is the fruit at the end.

I think we often forget that untold part of the Parable of the Sower:  it ultimately must yield good fruit, or it was a waste of effort.  And the fruit only happens when the tree reaches a spiritual maturity --- after getting the word to sprout in our hearts, so we must continue to fertilize its growth.

But there is even more untold truth in the Parable.  What about those soils in the story that ultimately yield no sprouting or growth from the seed --- the bad soils?  What if WE are bad soils for the seed of His word??

The hard soils are our hard hearts.  Wisdom and love bounce off hard hearts.  Hard hearts know everything already and reject others’ ideas --- even God’s --- and hard hearts reject love, because they want no one else in their lives.  People, they think, can only bring hurt to them.

But even the hardest hearts, those of solid rock, are not immune to God’s work on them.  I myself have seen some slammed by His sledgehammer, and all their confidence in their ideas and their self-sufficiency shattered in an instant.  But I’ve also seen works in progress: whether we want to or not, all life grows and changes.  Hard rains and rivers and glaciers can erode away the hardest rocks over time, or they can be melted by the sudden volcanic fires of life.  Weak soils, the thinnest sands, which cannot hold a toothpick upright, can be strengthened by soft rains and a gentle spreading of roots from a seed, grasping the soil together.  And growth came come to the most unlikely places.  That’s the example of the bigger picture of the seed and the soil --- they need each other, and together they create something new, something bigger than either of them: something that will last.

And that’s the dirty story of human life.  If we live it alone, as a rock or as sand, we may choose to change little or just get blown around, but we won’t last the way we are, despite our best efforts.  In the end, all our solo efforts can lead to is perhaps a gravestone over our heads, which will also disappear someday.

Or, we can open our hearts, capture a seed, nourish it, and last forever.

Every life story can have a happy ending --- in eternity.  It starts with making our soils ready, and capturing the word.