In the Parable of the Sower, Jesus explains to the disciples that "the seed is the Word of God." The farmer sows his seed, but not every seed finds a place of nourishment: some fall along the path; some fall on rock; some wither for lack of moisture; and some are choked out by thorns.
This morning, I read in God Calling:
I love to pour My blessings down in rich, in choicest measure. But like the seed-sowing---the ground must be prepared before the seed is dropped in. Yours to prepare the soil---Mine to drop the seed-blessing into the prepared soil. Together we share in, and joy in, the harvest. Spend more time in soil-preparing. Prayer fertilizes soil. There is much to do in preparation.
And I think to myself what a wonderful metaphor of the seed: it contains within its tiny, almost microscopic, body the plan, the promise, the power, the provision, the purpose, and the pronouncement of what it will become when it falls into good soil and is given sufficient moisture. Somewhere in Scripture (I cannot remember where), there is a passage about a man planting his field and then the rains come, and the field produces a crop without the man knowing how. And Proverbs 20: 4 tells us that the sluggard does not plow in season, so at harvest time he looks but finds nothing.
So our job is not to produce the crop---the seed contains everything within itself needed to produce the harvest. And the seed is the Word of God. Our job is to plow the soil and to water it with prayer. The harvest will take care of itself. Again, the quotation from Sirach 24 is appropriate:
I sought to water my own little garden, and this stream of mine became a rivulet, and the rivulet, a river,
then this stream of mine, a sea.
Thus do I send my teachings forth shining like the dawn,
to become known far off.
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