In the Gospel of Mark, chapter 4, we read of Jesus teaching about the Word of God: "This is how it is with the kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and through it all the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come."
That parable is immediately followed by the famous one about the mustard seed....but to his own disciples he explained everything in private.
Anyone familiar with the Old Testament might connect Jesus' parables about the Word of God growing and producing fruit with the passage from Isaiah 55:
As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thornbush will grow the pine tree, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
In other words, the Word that comes forth from God will reverse the curse that Adam/the man brought upon the earth/adamah: Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the plants of the field through the sweat of your brow.....
There is a remedy for the "painful toil" we suffer all the days of our lives. God has not left us alone in our suffering. As early as Genesis 6, we find Lamech naming his son "Noah," which means "comfort," because "he will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the Lord has cursed." The same Hebrew root that means "comfort" or "comforter" reappears after the Babylonian Exile when the Jews begin to rebuild their city, their temple, their culture under the direction of a man called "Nehemiah"/comfort.
Finally, after Jesus' life, death, and resurrection ("Behold, I make all things new!"), He sends the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, to renew the earth, beginning with our hearts and minds and souls. That renewal extends from us to our very planet, as Pope Francis and other popes have again and again reminded us in their encyclicals, especially Laudato Si . Just as Adam's estrangement from the Spirit of God damaged the earth, so our connection with the Spirit renews the earth.
Why read Scripture? Because "every word that comes forth from the mouth of God" begins to re-create and renew not only our minds and hearts and hearts but also our very earth. The same Word that created from chaos (Light! Be!) now re-creates a new heavens and a new earth through a renewed mankind, a new creation born from the Second Adam, Jesus Christ. We do not realize what is happening to us as we re-program our hearts and minds through Scripture, (while we sleep and rise again day after day), but one day, when the ear is ripe, we harvest the fruit it has produced in us.
More about this tomorrow, God willing.
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