Ploughing and sowing good seed

Schools and churches have been celebrating the long-standing festival of harvest thanksgiving. It is good for people to gather together and consider where our daily bread comes from and it is right, as part of our thanksgiving, to share with those who, at this time, do not have enough of life’s essentials.

To illustrate his teaching, Jesus frequently referred to the theme of harvest, including ploughing, sowing seed and troublesome weeds. His concern was not to teach about farming techniques and food for the body; his primary concern was food for the souls of men and women. He famously quoted, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ In other words, just as our bodies require physical food, the other part of our make-up which we call our soul (the ‘real’ me, or psyche) must have sustenance if it is to live.

Jesus insisted that He himself is to be that sustenance. ‘I am the bread of life’. And He calls us each to feed on him; not literally, but in the way that we may speak of a football devotee who eats, breathes and lives the game!

Taking another tack, he talks about the seed of his words being sown in the soil of our hearts, so that our moral and spiritual character grows. Maintaining the same imagery, such character is referred to as fruit. We are told there will be a divine harvest where this fruit will be assessed.

If we take such things seriously, then we need to think about whether the seed of God’s word for us has yet germinated. Our hearts are like a field. If the field is lying fallow, it will be dormant, lifeless and unyielding. A ploughed field however, is a field ready to receive seed which can, with appropriate amounts of water and sunshine, yield a life-giving crop.

The very fact that you have read this far, suggests that your heart is more likely to be a ploughed field than a fallow one. The question is what type of seeds do we allow to infiltrate our heart? Those seeds which take root the easiest are weeds. According to Jesus, we should be discerning as to what is good seed and allow that to germinate and grow in us.

When Christians are telling others about God, Jesus, faith etc, they are in fact sowing good seed, in the hope that some will fall on ploughed ground. A proportion of the same seed will inevitably fall on fallow ground and where this is so, some people become agitated or angry. When this happens perhaps it is the harrowing experience of God’s plough at work…

#belief #JesusthewaytoGod #Christianfaith #generosity #harvest #judgement #parable