When I came to Silverdale looking for a house to rent, I had two things on my list. I wanted to find a place for Katy to have a garden, and I wanted a place close enough to the church so I could bicycle to work. I got both!
Katy planted her garden when we first got here, and last night we had the first salad made from lettuce she planted. It was delicious, and it tasted even better because we knew it was home-grown.
Katy loves working in her garden. She's spent many happy hours in the garden digging, planting, weeding and watering. It's such a wonderful mystery to put seeds in the ground and watch them come up and become food for eating.
In the Gospel parable for Sunday, Jesus talks about sowing seeds. He says, "A sower went out to sow." Some of the seeds the sower sows are lost to birds, dryness, or thorns, but some of the seed grow up and yield bountifully: "some a hundred fold, some sixty, some thirty."
Jesus explains to the disciples that the seed is the word of God. The word of God takes root and grows in some people; in others it doesn't. The growth of a seed is a great mystery. How does a seed know when to send out its shoot? How does it know to grow upwards toward the sun? Why do some seeds grow and not others?
This tells me that the working of the word of God is a mystery. We can't force it; we can't control it; all we can do it receive it and let it do its work on our souls. I think of James 1:21, "Welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls."
I'm not sure how God's word has worked on me in my life. There were times when I had no good soil, and the word didn't grow in me. Other times there was tremendous growth in my spiritual life and in my relationship with God. Why sometimes and not others? It's a mystery.
Oh God, let the seeds of your word fall in the earth of my soul and grow abundantly.
-
No comments:
Post a Comment