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Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Today's Frontline Devotion Sunday, June 22, 2003 "Ears to Hear" |
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Frontline Devotion for Sunday, June 22, 2003 By Brenda Kessler
Text for the Day: Matthew 13:1-17
In today’s text Jesus uses his first parable. The word parable comes from the Greek word parabole, which means a placing beside. In other words Jesus used parables to compare or illustrate a point.
This parable centers on a farmer sowing seed. Some fell along the path and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly but because the plants did not have much soil the sun scorched them and they withered because they had no roots. Other seed fell among the thorns, which choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil where it produced a bountiful crop. Jesus ends by saying, “He who has ears, let him hear.”
Which type of soil are you? Which type of soil am I?
I recently received a list of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. Both my husband and I enjoyed whole-hearted belly laughs from almost all of them. One seemed especially appropriate to use for today’s devotion. A student wrote, “Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.”
Grandpappy would not have good soil to hear what Jesus has to tell him. We don’t have to be ninety-year-old Grandpappies or even sixty-year-old Grandpappies to have minds that have rusted shut or soil that is not receptive to what Jesus has to offer. I would wager to say that all of us know fifty-year-olds or forty-year-olds or even thirty-year-olds who have minds that have rusted shut. All of us know people who have soil that is not receptive to Jesus’ seed. Most of us, if we are really honest with ourselves, have had those times when OUR minds have rusted shut. We have had those times when WE have not been receptive to the seed that Jesus was trying to sow.
I suspect that all of us also know people who have minds that have not rusted shut. All of us know people who are good soil. All of us know people who yield a plentiful harvest from the seed that Jesus sows.
Which soil are you going to choose to be? Which soil am I going to choose to be?
“He who has ears let him hear.”
Prayer: Thank you, God, for offering the seed for living a bountiful life to all of us. Forgive us when we have let the seed fall on rocky places or thorny places. Turn our lives into good soil so that your word may produce a plentiful crop both in our lives and in the lives we touch. We ask this in Jesus name.
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