Is Your Ground Good Ground? – Lk. 8:1-18
Imagine being part of the westward expansion in the 1800s. You and your family might join up with a wagon train heading for the Plain States. Your plan is to go as far as Missouri or Kansas, where you hope to find a piece of land, build a house, and spend the rest of your life farming. What’s the first thing you would do upon arriving in Missouri? You’d start looking for land.
Being a farmer, you don’t want just any piece of land. You want one that’s suitable for farming. You want good soil, access to water, plenty of natural resources, and a nearby town so you’re not completely cut off. You know if you don’t find a good piece of land where you first stop, you have to keep looking.
In today’s text, we’ll read the parable of the sower. This particular parable is based on the same agricultural concept. It would have been familiar to the commoners of the day. Yet as familiar as it was, very few people understood was Jesus was talking about when he taught it. Jesus tells us why that it. It turns out the reason underscores one of the most important, fundamental principles of the Christian walk.