Imago Scriptura 18 - Seeds

I have a love/hate relationship with one of the trees in our yard. It is a sweet gum tree and every year it drops its seed balls which happen to be spiky and really annoying to clean up. Its a big tree and provides some shade to the house in the summer and its a very old tree so it has that going for it. But I am no fan of the spiky balls as the kids call them.

The spiky balls are currently falling from the tree and have coated our lawn and parts of our sidewalks. I have been procrastinating going out and cleaning them up to be perfectly honest. But reading today in Mark about the parable of the sower, I thought of those spiky balls. There are some that have fallen on the grass and would grow into sweet gum trees if the yard wasn’t mowed regularly and there are some that are on the sidewalk and on the road that won’t grow into anything.

There is the latter part of the parable where Jesus explains it in some respects and each time I read it, I realize how I am the different locations of the seed at different stages in life. There have been times that I feel like I have been able to let the seed flourish and grow deep roots in my walk with Jesus while there were other times that it feels like the seeds are falling just on sidewalk and pavement that won’t allow anything to grow. It does speak to me about the importance on my part of nourishing the soil in order to allow God’s love, Word, truth, grace, to grow deep.

As I write this though I also think about the soil of others’ lives - what am I doing to help prepare the soil for others in order for the seed to not only be sown in their lives but also to grow and flourish? How are we preparing the soil so that the sower can seed and see the harvest grow?