I love the Parable of the Sower. Jesus told his disciples it was the key to understanding all His parables, and He explained it in detail. The Sower (God) scatters the seed, (the Word). The soil represents the way our hearts respond to the Word. Jesus describes four kinds of soil, each producing a different type of harvest.
Some seed falls by the wayside onto soil so hard that the seed can’t penetrate it. It sits there till birds come and snatch it up. This is truth that never gets into a person’s heart, obviously producing no harvest. Some seed falls on stony ground.
The plant starts off great, but rocks keep it from putting down strong roots, and it soon withers away. This pictures someone who gladly receives the Word, but he doesn’t really take it in. On the surface, his activities look good, but there is no depth to his understanding; so, when problems come, instead of turning to God, he walks away. Other soil is full of weeds that crowd out the growing plant, keeping it from reaching maturity. In our hearts, the weeds are cares of this world. Finally, the good ground that nurtures and protects the seed and produces a good crop represents the heart of a person who lives a fruitful, God-centered life.
When reading this parable, I used to gloss over that part about the seed falling by the wayside. It didn’t seem relevant to me. I mean, that was about people with unreceptive hearts, who pay no attention to spiritual things, right? The truth is all around them, but they choose to disregard it. That wasn’t me — or was it? I didn’t think so. Then one morning as I was reading that parable, a still, small voice whispered, “That’s exactly what you do!” Not all the time, of course, but it does happen sometimes. For example, recently I left an evening church service thinking, Wow, what a powerful message! Then when I got home, I promptly plopped down in front of the TV and turned on a silly movie, removing all thoughts of the message I had just heard. I allowed an opportunity for spiritual growth to be gobbled up before the seed had a chance to germinate.
Proverbs 4:23 says, “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.” This is our responsibility. No one else can guard our heart or cultivate our soil for us. I had been skipping the first part of the parable and focusing on establishing roots and removing weeds. But why not keep time-wasting, destructive thoughts from getting into our minds in the first place? “Head ‘em off at the pass!” as my dad would say. To do this, we increase our heart’s receptivity to the Word.
When we hear a good message or suddenly recognize a new application to a well-known scripture, we don’t want to let that truth slip away to be gobbled up. Instead, we can give the seed an opportunity to germinate by taking time right away to soften our soil, turning it into good ground. We can think about how the message applies to us, asking the Lord to help us incorporate the newly-heard truth into our thinking. Then that seed will take root, and grow, and yield a fruitful crop in our lives.
The Parable of the Sower and Jesus’s explanation can be found in Matthew 13:3-9, 18-23; Mark 4:3-9, 13-20 and Luke 8:5-8, 11-15.