Sunday, March 20
Jeremiah 1:1-10
Psalms 8, 24, 29, 84
1 Corinthians 3:11-23
Mark 3:31-4:9
Today’s gospel reading from Mark in Chapter 4 is the Parable of the Sower. The seed from the sower falls on four different types of ground. The harvest depended on the kind of soil where the seed fell.
Have you ever heard or read something a second time, find it gripping and enlightening, and realized you’d missed the point earlier? This happens when there is something happening in our life that allows our minds to hear the real message. Jesus tells us that “Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.” If we want to find God’s word gripping and enlightening, we need to be open to the message he is sending, and not merely entertained by the story. We need to allow the gospel to penetrate our heart and really change the way we live our lives. We can’t let our myriad activities dominate our life in such a way that we don’t have time to deepen our roots of faith through prayer and Bible study.
I suspect that we are all a combination of the four soils. We allow God’s message to penetrate certain parts of our life, but then close our mind to other parts.
Everyone has a place in the parable of the sower – so which soil are you?
Claire Martin