Fertile Soil

Believe it or not, I am going to talk about the landscaping project in our front yard again. First I posted about the project which seemed like it would never end. Then I wrote about the fact that before I knew it there was grass growing. A couple weeks ago I discussed the weeds that have cropped up.

Well, in order to begin this project, my son and I needed to move the stone that was already down (we put this down instead of wood mulch). This stone was moved on a sidewalk on the side of our garage until we could find a new home for it.

We began the moving project last weekend and before the first shovel hit the first stone, the above picture is what we found. There were actually weeds growing in these rocks (see above). I reached down to pull them out and noticed how easily I could remove them. You see, just prior to this I was removing some weeds in the area where these stones were going to go. It took an incredible amount of effort to remove these weeds.

I was reminded of Jesus’ parable of the farmer who was planting his seed. He was showing us that that there would be different types of Christians:

“A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the 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, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. He who has ears, let him hear.”

Jesus was showing us that some people will be just like the weeds growing in our rocks with very shallow roots and easy to dislodge (“But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away.” – Matthew 13:21).

He also mentions there are three other types of people. One who doesn’t understand the word at all, another who lets the worries of this life choke out the word and a third who will be like most of my other weeds, with deep roots and very difficult to remove—these people will produce a nice crop. So which are you going to be?