Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Where are you Sowing?

Each day I will be posting from the daily Bible Reading plan we will be doing at West Side. On weekdays we will be going through the New Testament. On the weekends we will read passages from the Old Testament books of Psalms and Proverbs. We invite you to join along.

Today’s reading (Matthew 13) seems to be all about spreading a message. Jesus relates it to farming in his current day. Today we have made farming a big industry and mechanized it to perfection. When you travel and a corn field comes up next to your road, you can often see the straight rows of corn stretching to the sky. This is a different picture than first century farmers.

When Jesus lived framing was back breaking work. A farmer would hook to an ox or other beast of burden a plow. That ox, plow, and farmer would then sweat to break up the ground. After the ground had been broken up the farmer would then load a shoulder bag with seed, and then walk through his field chucking seed throughout the field. Whereever the seed landed that is where it would grow. There were no neat rows. There was now scientific precision. It was a hit or miss process.

Sometimes the seeds would fall on different types of soil, and as Jesus describes that because of this there are different results. I think we are to spread the Word of God in a similar fashion; throwing out seeds of truth to everyone who will hear. It is our job to cast the seed, and God’s job to water and cultivate the seed. So how is your seed casting?

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