It Just Keeps Coming Up...

It just keeps coming up...the parable of the sower. Found in Matthew chapter 13, Jesus tells of a farmer who scatters his seed. He apparently throws it everywhere. Some falls on the road, some falls among the rocks, others fall in the weeds, while the remaining falls upon good soil. The results of this erratic sowing pattern is of course plants that don’t grow at all because they are eaten by birds, plants that grow quickly, but easily die off, plants that never reach their full potential, and plants that thrive and produce a great crop respectively.

Jesus’s disciples are perplexed about his teaching style and question him on it. And, as one would expect, Jesus has the perfect answer for their puzzlement. Although, I doubt it provided much clarity at the time. He did however illuminate on the meaning of this particular parable. Explaining that not every seed planted, those seeds being the good news of the Gospel, will result in strong and faithful Christians.

This parable is harrowing to me. It exposes me to the core and I can’t shake it. It pops into my head time and time again. What kind of soil am I? I so want to be the good soil and I don’t think I am closed off enough to be the soil on the road, but man do I find myself similar to the rocky and a weedy soil.

I think I had a late arrival to growing up in the church. When I was my kids age, we went to church on occasion, but it was not on the regular. It wasn’t until my mother remarried that church was an every week thing. In fact, we went all in when Philip joined our family. If the church doors were open, we were likely there. I especially remember this when we moved to Texas. So, I think I was about 8 or 9 when this took place, so I had a solid upbringing in the Word. I am well churched. I may have missed several VBS’s and some early church camps, but church is a natural place for me. I thrived in the youth group and my college group at least until the weeds started to spring up.

Yep, the weeds first appeared around my junior year of college. I needed to buckle down and pull up that GPA. I had a job and responsibilities to make rent, contribute to the utilities, and fill up the gas tank. What hit the chopping block was the time I spent with our college group. And with less time there was less time to be good soil.

I don’t remember much about the time when I first graduated and moved to the big city to start my career. I know that I spent just about every weekend travelling back to my hometown to be with my girlfriend/fiance. Going to church would mean running into my parents and the guilt for not spending time with them, so I’d skip or head back to Fort Worth. I was lonely in Fort Worth to begin with, but that would be short lived because I would marry my best friend that year and we would start our life together.

We also had a roommate during our first couple of years of marriage so the college life didn’t really end, we just had more money and longer commutes.

I don’t know what prompted it, but Mandy and I started looking for a church to attend. There are so many options in the big city. We are both pretty set on sticking with the denomination of our upbringing, but that only narrowed down the search a little bit. There were big churches, little churches, and monster huge churches; ones that were super conservative and some that barely resembled the churches of our youth. We finally settled on one due mainly to the fact that there was a guy there that we went to school with and familiarity is a good quality.

There at Mid-Cities I thrived again. I threw in with the youth group and started to co-lead those efforts. I was leading singing and participating in the praise team when I wasn’t leading. I led communion thoughts and even preached on occasion when John was out. It was great! I was considering becoming a full-time youth minister. I even interviewed with a little church in Seguin. Later, I switched careers to teaching to be with the kids more often. The congregation decided to start compensating me for my efforts. We went on trips held Bible Studies at the house. A lot of the typical youth group things of the early 2000s.

Then the rocks came. My co-leader also decided to switch careers, but to one that would require a larger time commitment which would keep him from being so active. The once supportive parents of the youth group began to want a full-time minister to their kids. It wasn’t handled awesomely. To say that I felt hurt and betrayed would be a massive understatement. I would like to say that I’ve forgiven all parties, but that wouldn’t be honest. I’m living among the rocks and weeds.

Yep, almost a decade later and I’m still in the rocks and weeds. I’ve tried different things, different churches, different denominations, different jobs, different towns, different houses, added a kid, subtracted and added pets, went back to familiar things...I’m still in the rocks. At 40+ I get the feeling that I should have things figured out. I should be flourishing, producing a crop, not floundering.

Sometimes I wonder if it is just my lot in life that I am the soil that I am. If that is the case, I have noticed some encouraging things. One, that it is hard to get rid of plants in rocky soil. That grass that grows in between the cracks of the pavement keeps coming back no matter how much poison I pour on it. I pray that I am that tenacious that even if when the sun beats down and the poison flows that I have enough of the seed left to grow back with fury.  And two, weeds are different to everybody. My dad hates milkweed because he doesn’t like the look of it. I love it because it is a habitat and food source for beautiful things like honeybees and butterflies. The grass beneath the milkweed may not be as strong as it would be without the milkweed, but it is there and when the weed dies off, it will flourish again.

I may need to do some weeding, get rid of the stuff that distracts me, and add some good soil to my pot, but I’m still a growing seed and I will still produce a crop. I just hope and pray to find favor with the farmer.