Vast wheat field
Christ Jesus told great parables – metaphors. Many described the Kingdom of Heaven.
One of these stories tells about a farmer planting seeds on different types of soil and the resulting crops – why they did or didn’t grow.
My friend John Imrie has done enough gardening to know that though some soil is bad – hard and un-hospitable, you can use a shovel or a roto-tiller to break up the hardness.
Then you can mix in good soil to amend it, and eventually that soil becomes hospitable for plants.
So our difficult experiences, John noted, can be like the roto-tiller, breaking up the hard places in our hearts. When we add the qualities from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount – unconditional love, peace-making, kindness, mercy – we can become the good soil that brings forth abundantly.
John pointed out that just adding the humus and manure on top of hard ground doesn't do it. To transform the soil, to help it become productive, you still have to break up the hard clods and thoroughly mix in the good stuff.
One of these stories tells about a farmer planting seeds on different types of soil and the resulting crops – why they did or didn’t grow.
My friend John Imrie has done enough gardening to know that though some soil is bad – hard and un-hospitable, you can use a shovel or a roto-tiller to break up the hardness.
Then you can mix in good soil to amend it, and eventually that soil becomes hospitable for plants.
So our difficult experiences, John noted, can be like the roto-tiller, breaking up the hard places in our hearts. When we add the qualities from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount – unconditional love, peace-making, kindness, mercy – we can become the good soil that brings forth abundantly.
John pointed out that just adding the humus and manure on top of hard ground doesn't do it. To transform the soil, to help it become productive, you still have to break up the hard clods and thoroughly mix in the good stuff.
Good black soil and happy spring flowers
If our hearts have grown hard, it’s sometimes a struggle to let the clods of criticism, resentment, or hurt feelings be broken up. Trials and difficulties have a way of encouraging careful self-examination.
When we’re willing to let honest self-examination improve the soil of our attitudes to purity, listening, unselfishness, there’s no limit to the good we can do.
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