In the parable of the Sower, Jesus tells us what happens to seed that falls on a variety of ground conditions, from the dry path where the seeds waste away in the sun to the good soil in which they can bear fruit. Seed planted in shallow soil doesn’t have much room to grow the roots that allow it to survive. Seeds choked out by weeds and thorns can’t make it past the cares of this world to bear their fullness in God.
Clearly, we want to be nurtured in the best soil possible!
The beauty of this passage is that it moves us past questions like “am I doing the right thing?” or even “am I being faithful?” and instead considers the wider environment of grace. We do not live as isolated plantings: we grow and are nurtured within a wider context of love, hope, and faithfulness.
Soil is the setting in which we grow. Soil can be family and culture. Soil can be environments of encouragement and love, or places in our lives where we experience healing and faith.
As Christians, we cherish good soil as a gift from God. This soil includes faith practices like forgiveness and generosity, courage, unconditional love, and integrity. Good soil for me includes beauty and mystery, and an abiding sense of my belovedness.
Soil can be actual dirt as well! For me, delight in God’s creation is an integral part of my faith, and few things prepare my heart for the gifts of God as a thunderstorm rolling in or a sabbath walk in the woods.
Soil may present as dirt, but it’s actually magical stuff. That handful of loamy soil that you might scoop up from your backyard didn’t just come out of a bag from the garden shop. It’s a fertile collection of life and death cycles that span millennia, teeming with the collected energy of many years’ worth of footfalls and fallen leaves that creates the very possibility of life.
What is sown on good soil bears fruit, and it does so extravagantly. Sixty or a hundredfold, in fact!
To be a people of faith is to do more than simply worship God…it is to delight in good soil, and to cultivate soil that can nurture all God’s children.
Faithfully,
