What's In A Seed?

There is a parable* in the New Testament that mentions wheat farming from an ancient perspective that is still practiced today. Assured that a piece of property has been cleared of stones, plowed and fit to accept the seed, we can begin. The inexperienced often throw seed in every direction thinking they are sowing but the knowledgeable farmer goes into a prepared field to begin sowing. Tomatoes or potatoes require a different cultivation format but the Lord used wheat in a few of His parables. Jesus implies that some seed found its way to the extreme or curious fringes along the very edge. The stones from the field were piled near an access road where bramble bushes would grow and the birds would have had a field day. No pun intended. Every seed has a life of its own and in a different toss would have landed in the good ground. You don’t see the farmer focusing on the desolate areas but what we observe is an inadvertent loss of a precious item; the seed. In that seed is a future and a hope. It has all the potential of any other seed in the sack but where it lands is up to the inadvertent action of the sowing. Time and chance happens, as Solomon would say. Eccl 9:11-12

Of all the landing zones mentioned, the thorny patch is worthy of examination. A shallow start or a bird snack is one thing but the thorn garden has a classification of its own. In this sticky situation the dirt is suitable enough and has depth, sunshine and a built in security system. It may produce an attractive flower or a fragrance like a rose and of course is part of a community of assorted weeds and briers. When good seed ends up in undeveloped territory, it is unfortunate but then it happens all too often.

The root in the ground is the heart of the problem. At first a basic sprout is like any other conversion to any other religion but the rich soil of American Christianity lends itself to the environment of achievement and expectation. A prosperous preacher who drinks and beats his wife can still be seen on Sunday with a sack of seed, so let’s not credit the farmer for crop failure or a bountiful harvest and how others handle their germination process is of little concern. As the roots of the good seed get entangled with the root of the weeds it soon becomes difficult to consider leaving that plot of dirt. The riches of this world are being offered wholesale to many church members today. Twisted among the roots are scriptures that seem to imply that the Lord is pleased with much activity, many friends and a social or environmental agenda. Patriotism, politics and moral causes along with Christian fiction, contemporary gospel music and Jesus movies are implemented as nitrate additives to insure a false nutrition in the early years of this Purpose Driven garden party.

In our modern age the thorns are longer and the roots go deeper into the world, the world that is about to be destroyed by fire just before the last wheat harvest. In the outside chance that a stalk of wheat survives all of this and grows to maturity, the chances are that that stalk of wheat would not be part of the harvest. It’s a, ‘being in the wrong place at the wrong time’ scenario. It’s so out of character and is one of those oddities of nature that happens rarely but today the way the gospel is being presented you would think that it is a field of thorns that is the desired crop. In another parable Jesus speaks of such an agenda. Thorn seed is being sowed by many evil evangelists, and is sprouting up unnoticed in the fields of what were once amber waves of grain. The ideal scene would be a thorn among the wheat. We could handle that with a hoe but we are beyond that agricultural anomaly now.*

T. LaVigne
*Article based on the parables found in Matt 13:1-23; Mark4:1-20; Luke 8:4-15