Soil Testing

At the risk of sounding a bit self-satisfied, I confess that as I listened to the Parable of the Sower, I immediately identified with the good soil. (C’mon, didn’t you, too?) Well, surely I wasn’t rocky – hadn’t the Holy Spirit spent years dragging major boulders off the piece of land that was me? I wasn’t hard… didn’t I strive to internalize the truths I found every day in His Word and to live continually open to the Spirit? I wasn’t thorny… sure, the cares of life get in-my-face sometimes, but I don’t feel like they’re choking me or anything.

Probably the majority of us in the pews Sunday morning considered ourselves good soil. Could do with a bit of fertilizer, perhaps, but all in all pretty good stuff to work with.

But during the sermon a little arrow of truth shot through my self-satisfaction, and I realized something. I’m not all good soil. I mean, maybe there aren’t any mammoth boulders any more, but it doesn’t take a twenty-ton piece of granite to prevent seed from growing. A low-lying ledge of shale will do it, too. In a certain corner, could there be such a hardness lying just below the surface, preventing truth and transformation from penetrating deeply, taking root, and bearing fruit in that area?

And what about the well-traveled paths of my life? The exposed, worn-down places of daily activity, the busy and very practical places that lie open to the critical eyes of others, like the home and the workplace. Have I refused to let the Heavenly Farmer plow up those areas? Does He have to write any of those off as fruitless territory?

And hadn’t I noticed some thorns and thistles cropping up far out in left field? I tried to pull them out but they are stubborn! And it’s hard to see the harm in just a few. There’s so much wheat waving around them, I’ve been sure the good seed would eventually choke them out. Besides, how can the Farmer expect anything good to grow in that spot anyway – it’s pure clay there!

That doesn't deter Him. It’s easy to forget that there’s a richness and a tenderness and a yet a terrible ruthlessness in the sowing and cultivating work of the Holy Spirit. He intends to pour Himself into the soggy, discolored clay pits of my life, making them dark and rich and loamy; He purposes to dig up the shale, revealing untouched potential; He stands ready to clear away the brambles and thorns, giving the Truth room to breathe and stretch and grow in me.

But He awaits my go-ahead signal (we are ever soil-with-a-will, and He respects that). If I refuse Him that freedom, I am left with the stone and the thorn and the diminishing crop.

And if I grant it, who knows what can come from just a little plot of earth and a Heavenly Farmer?