Ben Fourie

“Listen then if you have ears” Matthew 13:9

This story about a man who one day took his bag and went sowing is so well known that sometimes we do not have ears to hear that it is aimed at each of us individually. A lot has been said about the seed of the Word that went forth into the world. Every one of those places where the seed fell have been analyzed to the fullest. We will also touch on that but maybe a little bit differently than usual. The traditional explanation is the one that Jesus also used namely to see the world as the field for the seed.

In this field you then find people who are hardened, like scattered seed they lie on the surface and are easily gobbled up by the birds. Other have a semblance of faith but the rocks of disbelief lie just below the little bit of sand in which the seeds must geminate and when the hot sun touches the new plants they wither quickly. Weeds like good soil just as much as the good seeds like it and in the third place we find good soil for as we see the seeds did geminate but were eventually choked by the thorn bushes. Last but not least, we find good soil where the plants flourish.

Let us now broaden our outlook about this parable and look at the field not so much as the world at large, but as our own life where one also finds different kinds of soil. We are made up of good and evil. We are not the same each day. My view of the field of the parable has always been one where the field is divided in four equal sized quarters, the hard road, rocky soil, weed choked soil and good soil, but this is wrong, as no field in real life looks like this. Our own personal field changes according to how we feel and what is happening to us, our emotional and physical wellbeing and many other factors. Most important however is that despite the many things impacting on my life, I still have control over it. I am the only one who really determines how my field looks from day to day and whether the seed of the Word will grow or not grow.

Prayer: I have to confess today that many times I have neglected my own personal field. Amen