sowing a seed

Some of you may recognise the picture that has been my bebo picture for as long as I remember (see below), well something the minister said in church this morning got me thinking about this.


Luke 8: 5 ~ "A farmer went out to sow his seed. Some of it fell on the road; it was tramped down and the birds ate it. Other seed fell in the gravel; it sprouted, but withered because it didn't have good roots. Other seed fell in the weeds; the weeds grew with it and strangled it. Other seed fell in rich earth and produced a bumper crop"

For the majority of my Christian life I have felt that I am one of those lucky people whose seed fell on 'good ground', and that God was going to use my life to produce a hundredfold crop. However with every passing day, with the many times that I mess up, I am beginning to realise that there is weeds in my garden that need to be rooted out. Sometimes I fear that the seeds never fell on good soil in the first place. So my prayer is that God would plant new seeds in my life that fall on good ground, and produce a bumper harvest for His Kingdom and glory.

As I pondered some more, I began thinking that this problem is deeper than I first imagined, much deeper than just the weeds surrounding my own life. We live in a western culture that has thorns and vultures everywhere. We have abused our lands so far that there is barely any good soil left to plant in. Financial security, comfort in our churches, distant acts of kindness, image & media, and much more are choking the life out of the seeds God has planted in our lives. I believe we need to 'root' this things out of our lives if we are ever see our seeds grow into the full fruition that God has for our lives.

And this is were the hypocrisy begins, the challenge for me and others is to actually start living out these words, and stop talking about them.