Harvest-Minded People: Good Soil
“What do you make of this? A farmer planted seed. As he scattered the seed, some of it fell on the road, and birds ate it. Some fell in the gravel; it sprouted quickly but didn’t put down roots, so when the sun came up it withered just as quickly. Some fell in the weeds; as it came up, it was strangled by the weeds. Some fell on good earth, and produced a harvest beyond his wildest dreams.”
I am sure you’re familiar with this parable. You’ve probably heard it a thousand times and have seen it interpreted a thousand different ways. When I was in middle school, my youth group went to summer camp at Camp Caswell and I came home knowing for sure that this was a message Jesus had sent directly to me, and that I needed to go to my school and immediately start scattering seed. 8th grade Jessica needed to scatter seed all day long by approaching kids she didn’t know and asking if they knew where they’d go when they died. Then 8th grade Jessica needed to just accept that sometimes that seed would fall on bad soil. What can be done? Sorry, fellow middle schoolers, I tried to save your souls from the fiery depths of hell but you didn’t feel like listening to my cold-calling Jesus attempts, so…
About 6 years ago, I went on a mission trip to a small village in Kenya. The trip was split into two segments - the first segment involved helping to build housing (see me, digging in the soil in the picture?) and the second involved ministering to those in the village, under the leadership of a few Kenyan pastors. I remember we went to a school one afternoon and watched as our guides spoke to an entire class about Jesus. The students were young and were much more interested in eyeing these strange visitors with white skin than they were in listening to what was being said. The speaker asked who in the classroom was a Christian, and almost all hands shot up. He asked the two students who hadn’t raised their hands to stand, and then asked them if they wanted to follow Jesus. To no one’s surprise, they said yes. Everyone clapped, and then we left for our next ministry location.
“We can drop seeds all day long, but if we’ve not taken the time to prep the soil, we can’t be surprised if nothing grows.”
It felt hollow to me, like I’d flown across the globe to waste everyone’s time. It felt like I’d just taken part in something that could someday serve to turn these two very precious children all the way off to Christianity - the exact opposite of what I’d wanted to do. Seeds were being scattered, but was the soil even ready for them? We can drop seeds all day long, but if we’ve not taken the time to prep the soil, we can’t be surprised if nothing grows.
Really think about this. Why did you start being a Christian? Someone told you about Jesus at some point in your life, and you came to love him yourself. Why? Was it because the Bible said you should? Was it because you were afraid not to? Or was it because you watched someone in your life, or several someones, bear good fruit over and over again? My guess is that, if you really give it some serious and objective thought, you’ll realize you came to know Jesus because you witnessed good fruit in action.
“May Jesus find us up to our elbows in nourishing soil, readying the earth for the news of the kingdom, tending seeds, and piling ripe fruit into baskets. ”
A friend of mine told me his story a while back. He’d grown up going to church, but the soil around him was rocky, and the news of the kingdom hadn’t sunk in. When he got a little older, he had his own church camp experience, and came home feeling like he was on fire. But after a while, he came down from his camp high and the fire went out. He told me that he became an adult and would go through difficulties that lead him to pray, but as soon as those difficulties had passed, his prayers would stop. It wasn’t until he met the woman who is now his wife that he finally began to cultivate good soil. “She was so happy,” he told me, “in a way that I’d never been. It wasn’t surface-level happiness - it was an all the time joyfulness in every situation. She had something I didn’t, and I wanted it for myself.” Good fruit. The kind that makes others want to grow their own, the kind that makes everyone it comes into contact with go digging in their sheds for their tillers.
What if the church was a little less concerned with hell and cold-calling evangelism and more concerned about bearing really good fruit and cultivating the soil so that, when the news of the kingdom falls, it’ll hit good earth? Talk about a harvest!
May we be the ones in the dirt. May we be a holy mess, always adding goodness to the soil upon which we find ourselves. May Jesus find us up to our elbows in nourishing soil, readying the earth for the news of the kingdom, tending seeds, and piling ripe fruit into baskets.
Amen
