What Might Be Missing In This Parable?

This last Sunday were heard the familiar parable about the sowing of seeds.  (Matt. 13:1-9 & 18-23)

I am thinking that it is not the intent of the soil to reject the Good News.  It is the presence of something else — the evil one — that gets in the way.

And how we allow such a force to influence our thinking.

The questions that came to mind is:  Is it impossible for faith to grow on impossible soil — in impossible conditions?  Conditions that get in the way when all growth comes by God’s grace?

If, if, it is true that nothing is impossible with God.  Then I would have to believe that even seed sowed on the path, or rocky ground, has possibility.

Most of us have seen green growth on pebble-paved bike trails; or on a cement side walk, or on the blacktop of a parking lot.    Right?

So it behooves us to wonder about the over all truth of the parable. 

Just possibly Jesus had a thought, that isn’t obvious in the telling, that we miss because we take the story at face value.

Notice in the explanation of the parable how all of the areas that receive the word “hear it.”

This to me is a key that needs unlocking.  

Think of the people you know who once were active in the faith and have fallen away.  

Or children who heard the word in Sunday School and then never came back to worship after confirmation until they have children of their own.

Or people who have experienced great pain of some sort and blame God.  And for a time, sometimes along time, become faithless.

There are at least two generations who “grew up” in church who are now absent from the pews.  But have not left God out of their live.

All this is to say that even the word that is sown in the toughest of conditions.  Can one day begin to grow healthy and strong.

The growth just blooms later with some.

God never ever give up on us.

I truly treasure it when people don’t limit God’s possibility.

18 ‘Hear then the parable of the sower. ¹⁹When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. ²⁰As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; ²¹yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. ²²As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. ²³But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.’  (Matt. 13)