Daily Reflections ...

The parable of the sower is confronting: a series of challenges to our faith commitment. Maybe I’ve heard and understood—whew, got past the birds! And maybe I’ve held onto my faith through some relatively light troubles—negotiated a little rocky ground! But the cares of the world and the lure of wealth—those tenacious thorns—I’m afraid that the choking power of these concerns regularly overwhelms the demands of following Jesus. Indeed, who but a saint could ever produce a hundredfold, or even sixty or thirty?

I think this reading of the parable is quite legitimate: I think Jesus meant to challenge us. But we must not then say, “Well, there’s no hope for me—I’ll bumble along, try not to sin too terribly, and leave the heavy fruit-bearing to the saints!” This either or thinking (either I’ll be a saint, or a nobody) prevents us from making any effort to respond more fully to Christ’s call.

Let’s try a complementary reading that might help. Instead of the different sowings being our eventual destinies (his faith got pecked away by birds, hers got choked by thorns) let’s treat each day as a sowing opportunity. The seed of God’s word is being constantly scattered in our lives: where will it fall? Many times, perhaps, it has passed us by—stolen by the birds—or we have been distracted by the thorns of our cares. But this isn’t preordained. We can be fruitful any time that we hear the word, that we hear Christ’s call. Nobody lives permanently in the good soil, but neither does anyone dwell wholly among stones and thorns: every moment is an encounter with Christ to which we can respond, and each green shoot that emerges when we do so, carries the hope of harvest.

by Chad Hargrave