Saturday September 23, 2017
The soil is the heart, the place where the seed of God’s word is to be received and hidden, and from where it will appear in its own time in a revolution of freshness and new life. But the difficulty is that the soil is never perfect.
1. “Some seed fell along the path….” The path is where everyone walks: it’s public. It’s not a place of interest in itself; it leads elsewhere. When you are on a path you are between places, you are nowhere. The path has no interiority. If I’m always on the way to somewhere else (and which of us isn’t nowadays?) I’m nowhere, and the word of God cannot find a place in me.
2. “Some seed fell on rocky ground….” The heart can be like a rock or a stone: solid, impenetrable, self-enclosed, separate, unloving and unloved…. Throughout the ages it has been a common metaphor for the heart. “I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh” (Ezk 11:19).
3. “Some seed fell among thorns….” It has a chance to grow there, but everything else is growing there too. My power is divided into a thousand parts, and only one is available for the word of God. It’s like flicking through the pages of a magazine: nothing remains in the heart, even though everything was promised.
4. “Some seed fell on good soil….” It’s good soil when none of the above applies. Then the heart is deep and soft and silent. Then I may hear the word of God.
