Luke 8:15 - “But the seed in the good earth — these are the good-hearts who seize the Word & hold on no matter what, sticking with it until there's a harvest.” Good morning, Anne. This is the last of the four scenarios in Jesus’s Parable of the Seed Scatterer, as He is explaining each of those to His Disciples, during their debrief after He publicly shared the Metaphor. If you’re like me, this parable remains fascinating to you, because it is so rich in its layers of real life truth. I can see myself being the seed on the path many times from birth to 20 years old. Then, I was the seed on gravel for the first year or so after I personally encountered Jesus. In the four-plus decades since, I’ve aimed to be the good soil, but often visited the reality of thorns choking my spiritual life. I used to think this was four kinds of people, & even tried to reason which ones were really saved. Now I realize, that these are four different states of soils that my spiritual life can be described by, at any given moment. I may be good soil today… but will I be, next month? It’s not about who’s got salvation & who doesn’t, but about how we are stewarding our relationship with Him. Is it central & preeminent, or slipping to the back burner? Father, please inspire Anne & me to do as described in The Message’s rendering of this verse: Seize Your Word & cling to it, no matter what life throws at us. We don’t wanna be like the panicky drowning person who if flailing their arms so violently that they won’t grab the life ring that’s been thrown to them.
Tom Bourke 12-15-2023
