Devotion - Tuesday, November 10

It was during my college years that I heard a retelling of the parable in Matthew 13.  This is the one where the sower casts the seed and some falls on the path, some among thorns, some on rocky soil, and some on the good soil.  

In the typical interpretation, we are warned against being like the path (where birds come and snatch up the seed), or the rocky soil (with no depth of root), or like the thorns (which choke out the plants), but to be like the good soil.  We even sing a song to this effect - "Lord, let my heart be good soil....."

The alternate retelling which stuck with me was from someone who understood that a sower would know, before casting the seed, where that seed was going and the likely outcome of the seed being cast there.  While seed, cast in the wrong places is unlikely to yield much grain, the sower does not withhold the seed.

God's grace, God's goodness, God's gifts are freely given out to all.  There is a verse which reminds us that God sends the rain to benefit the fields of the just as well as to the fields of the unjust.  Whatever may befall those who abandon God, it does not befall them because God ceases to provide for them.

I pray that our hearts may be "good soil."  And at least part of the determination of ourselves as such is a full awareness that God loves us not because of our response.  It is because of God's unwavering love that our hearts respond with what goodness we can manage to offer.