Good Ground In Disguise
Mark 4:8
But
other seed fell on good ground and yielded a crop that sprang up,
increased and produced: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred.”
I read an
excerpt from a book by Brian Cavanaugh, a Franciscan priest, who tells a story
about when he was in seminary. He and
some friends wanted to plant a small vegetable garden in an empty patch of
ground in back of the seminary. It was
an old dirt-covered hard-packed parking lot.
They asked the head of the seminary if they could use a sunny corner of
the plot to put the garden in. The old
gentleman looked at the hard-packed dirt and gave permission, saying, 'You're
wasting your time. Nothing will ever grow there! But, go ahead if you still
want to.''
They found a
pick-ax and a rake and a shovel and raked four inches of stones into neat walls
outlining the garden. One of them swung
the pickax and struck what must have been a former refuse area. It was a gardener's dream: dark, composted, fertile soil just sitting
there waiting to be discovered under that dusty, hard-packed top. They looked at each other and smiled and said
in unison, 'Ah, nothing will grow there.'
Their garden did grow. They
harvested fresh, plump veggies out of it that fall. What looked dusty and dead on top had really
been rich ground for growing.
I have known
some people much like that dusty, hard-packed parking lot. They looked like unlikely soil to sow the
Gospel to. Yet they have, indeed,
received the Gospel with gladness and yielded much fruit. Worried about who you’re sowing the Gospel
to? Think that person is just a
hard-packed, dusty parking lot where nothing will grow? Worried about spiritual crop failure? Sow those seeds anyway! Plant seeds where you can as often as you
can. All you see is the surface; you can’t
see what lies just under the surface. If
Brother Cavanaugh and his fellow students had listened to the head of the
seminary they would not have enjoyed fresh vegetables that fall. They would never have had the satisfaction of
seeing the tender young plants shoot up through the soil and grow in mature plants.
Another story,
and I do this from memory, was a patch of ground in back of a neighbor’s house
on the dead-end street I grew up on.
They decided to plant a garden in a marshy area of their back yard. It was thick with weeds and had many small
trees growing in random there. They didn’t
have tools to properly prepare the ground so they cultivated what they could
and planted their garden in patches.
They grew a small but fruitful garden.
They harvested tomatoes and cukes and potatoes that were big and ripe
and good tasting. Most of the neighbors
told them not to bother planting there but they went and planted anyway and
their efforts paid off with a good crop.
Did you see a
dusty patch of ground in your mind when you read this? Sow seeds there. Do you see a weed-covered patch of ground? Sow your seeds there. Only God can make the seeds grow but they won’t
grow if you don’t sow.
Don’t expect God
to give increase where you haven’t done any work. “O Lord God, we want more souls to come to
our church!” Well, if you really want
that then go plant seeds so God can give us a harvest.
Stephen Cram March 23, 2014
Daniel 1:8
But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile
himself with the portion of the king’s delicacies, nor with the wine which he
drank; therefore he requested of the chief of the eunuchs that he might not
defile himself.
Visit my pastor’s blog at http://pastorjonrhinehart.blogspot.com/.
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TV at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/praise-chapel-tv
.
Unless otherwise noted all Scripture is from the New King
James Version of the Bible.
