By Jack Wyman

It was a mild overcast Saturday in the spring, in beautiful rural Connecticut.

I was helping my dad plant his garden. My father was unsurpassed in the serious and precise business of planting. Every detail was included. Much to my youthful, laborious dismay.

Nothing was overlooked. Dad was a perfectionist when it came to his garden.

Seeds, though tiny, were central to the outcome of the entire gardening enterprise. I’d watch Dad as he’d take a seed or two, carefully opening the moist, cool, cultivated soil—cultivation was essential—and inserting the seed into the soft dirt and gently covering it up. Then pressing it down.

Seeds contain the mysteries—and the success or failure—of growth, the outcome of the harvest, and the enjoyment of the bounty. They had to be planted in the right manner in the right soil.

A couple thousand years before my dad and I were planting that garden, Jesus told his followers a story. He often told stories. The Greek term for “parable” is “a placing beside.” Jesus drew comparisons and analogies by placing his stories next to the spiritual truth he was illustrating. Jesus took the familiar and used it to point out something less familiar but much more important to understand.

Jesus was a captivating storyteller. We know this because the Bible says he spoke far better than the teachers of the Jewish law and that the “common people heard him gladly” (Mark 12:37). He was a popular speaker. Jesus spoke of things that the people of that first-century agrarian culture could easily relate to.

He spoke about sun and light; earthquakes, fire, storms, and rain. He spoke about seeds and barns and rocks and sand; about oxen, sheep, and goats; about lambs and wolves. Jesus also spoke of vines and trees; and thorns and thistles. His words stretched themselves around the whole natural created order.

On that day, Jesus climbed into a boat on the Sea of Galilee and spoke to the large crowd gathered on the shore. His parable is recorded in Matthew 13.

Jesus told them about a farmer who went out to his field to sow seeds. As the farmer scattered the seeds, they fell in various places. Some seeds landed on the beaten pathway where the ground was hard. The birds came and ate them.

Other seeds fell on shallow and rocky soil. They sprouted up quickly but had no roots. Under the scorching heat of midday, they withered and died. Still, other seeds landed among thorns. Those thorns grew and crowded and choked the tender plants.

Jesus may have paused here for effect. Most Christians are familiar with this story and know the narrative, the ending, and the meaning. Those who listened to Jesus that day may have wondered if any of the seeds the farmer planted would survive. And what was the purpose of this story?

Jesus told his listeners—who by now are waiting for an application, a moral to this tale—that the farmer threw some of the seeds on fertile ground. The seeds took root and the roots went deep into that good soil. Jesus said those seeds produced a bountiful yield that was “thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted!” (Matthew 13:8).

Finally, success! Finally, a good harvest!

This story is about you and me. It’s about the hearts and lives of all people. Those who were on the shore of Galilee that day and all of us who seek to make it in these challenging times. It’s lost none of its relevance or significance.

Jesus explained its meaning to his disciples. Everyone is in here somewhere.

Some hearts are hard. They resist God’s love and kindness; assert their independence from divine rule, and determine to live their lives on earth as the ultimate and only existence. In their calloused belief, there is no future beyond the grave.

The conscience of the hard-hearted person is “seared with a hot iron” (I Timothy 4:2). These live in rebellion to God and his truth. Nothing is more heartbreaking than the hardened heart.

Some hearts are hollow. They are easy-believers. At first, they respond to the gospel with enthusiasm and joy. But when difficulties and troubles come; when the winds of adversity pick up and the storm clouds of doubt descend, these hearts change from joy to bitterness, and to abandonment.

These hearts never took root and, like Pliable in Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, they go back and fade away. The hollow heart is not faithful. It is a divided and undecided heart. It is ruled by circumstance. It is a fair-weather companion. It is not steadfast and resolved; it is complacent and complaining.

Some hearts are hindered. They are too easily distracted, beguiled, and hypnotized by the present age. The cares and allurements of the world, the ambitions of self, the competition to achieve, and the greed to acquire crowd out and choke off the spiritual priority and meaning of life. 

Hindered hearts compartmentalize their days and the spiritual part grows smaller with each passing grasp. The weeds and thorns of this world overtake them. In this social media age, through which flow infinite bedazzled temptations, the danger to the distracted heart is great.

Let us thank God this is not the end of the story.

Some hearts are harvested. The spiritual seeds of their lives fall on good ground. They cultivate, guard, and nurture a desire for God, a love for Jesus; a full trust in him, and an obedience to his word. Their goodness and devotion multiply unto others. Their spiritual harvest is bountiful, their lives well-lived, their reward great.

Seeds can grow. Or not.

By the infinite love and amazing grace of God, the soil of the heart can be miraculously changed through cultivation; weeds and thorns pulled up, stones removed, hardened ground turned over, renewed, and softened.

It all depends on where the seeds fall.

To order Jack Wyman’s book, “Everything Else: Stories of Life, Faith and Our World”, go to amazon.com, Christian Book Distributors or barnesandnoble.com. It is also available on Kindle and eBooks.

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