Good Seed In Bad Soil
Bad Soil Is Often Most Desperate For Something Good
by Eric Elkin
“And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow.””
The squirrels in my yard are amazingly committed to getting into our bird feeders. They will throw their bodies at them without any assurance the jump will be successful. Often their leaps result in failure. Their claws will grasp the feeder just enough to flip them over before crashing on the ground.
For the past few years, I have been engaged in an all-out battle with the squirrels. This summer, I finally admitted defeat. Elimination is no longer an option. My only hope is to try and minimize their impact.
The other morning I noticed a squirrel had broken a branch on a Birch tree in our yard. It must have tried to use it to jump to a feeder. But the limb was too delicate to bear the weight. The fractured arm of the tree was almost enough to re-start the war, but cooler heads prevailed.
The tree is one Peggy, and I planted when we first moved into our house. It had grown tall and full in these past seven years. Yet, when I told Peggy about the broken branch, she noticed something else. The tree was not doing as well as we thought. While the trunk was straight, it was leaning as though it was about to fall.
“God has a plan for how to start anew…In those places and times of hardship, it seems appropriate to think about the newness and change and hope that comes when God takes twigs and makes cedars.”
Peggy was frustrated. “This is the problem with our yard,” she said, “the soil is just not good.” The dirt in our yard is a mixture of sand and clay. Sand does not compact well. This does not give tree roots something to hold onto. Clay is hard. It prevents roots from going deep to help it stabilize. As a result, some trees grow then fall over.
Still, despite the conditions, not every tree succumbs to the poor soil. We’ve planted over twenty trees since we moved into our house. At least fifteen of them are doing very well. While Peggy will complain about what she cannot grow in our yard, the trick is finding the right kind of plants.
A sower went out to sow. Anyone familiar with the Bible knows where the story is going. The sower sows seed over all kinds of soil. Every type of soil, except the good soil, rejects the seed. Some seed gets discarded right away, while others are allowed to grow before the plant it produces dies.
I have listened to this parable a million times. Each time, the suggestion is to learn to become good soil. If you are good soil, then God’s love will grow in you. The problem is “bad” soil is often the ones most desperately in need of God’s love. They are this way because so little love has broken the surface of their existence.
Today, if you read this scripture, I want you to focus on the sower and the seed, not the soil. God throws good seeds across every type of soil. Sure some of it will not take hold and grow. But, like our yard, sometimes, a good seed does grow in bad soil. God must think so too, or else nothing would grow in our yard. And, God never would have wasted time throwing the seed into bad fields.
Click to read Matthew 13: 1-23
Reflection Questions:
How difficult is it to work with bad soil?
When have you help turn bad soil into something good?
Have you ever discovered a way to improve your own soil conditions?
When has something good changed you against your wishes?
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