Day 32: February 28

Matthew 13:1-23

SCRIPTURE HIGHLIGHTSOBSERVATON
Four types of soil: The Path, Rocks, Thorns, and Good Soil. Various results on the Good Soil: 100 to 1, 60 to 1, and 30 to 1. There are no participation trophies here. Just Haves and Have Nots. You get some, more, or lots. Or nothing at all.

Verse 12 is painful. “But as for those who don’t have, even the little they have will be taken away.” This sounds so harsh, so final. Is God okay with cutting people off? How can he blame people for not seeing or hearing when they’re blind and deaf? This is a good verse for Calvinists and a fine topic for argument. It’s also not the main point of the passage so I don’t need to explore that rabbit trail right now.  

Matthew references OT prophecy again, keeping with his theme of Jesus’ ministry fulfilling God’s promises of Messiah. Again he pulls in the theme of repentance and making whole: “…change their hearts and minds and lives that I may heal them.”

Jesus explains what makes people unfruitful: The Evil One, Distress, Abuse, Worries, and the False Appeal of Wealth.

Jesus sums it up. Hear what I’m saying! Understand what I’m saying! Bear fruit! Produce a harvest of righteousness!

APPLICATION
This passage is so familiar. I’ve heard it plenty of times. Farmer, seeds, birds, thorns, etc. It’s tempting to yawn and say, “Of course I’m the good soil!” and mentally skip over it.

But consider: Life is not a happy jaunt down an impeccably landscaped path at Longwood Gardens. Real life is hard and invariably much harder than you expect. No one has inflation, cancer, bereavement, hatred, betrayal, loss, persecution, war, the Great Depression, divorce or disability on their Mental Life Bingo cards. Yet these things happen to us. Distress is real. Worry and fears are real. Scraping by financially is painfully real. And they absolutely challenge us spiritually.

The older I get the more I understand why St. John of the Cross wrote about “the dark night of the soul.” Our hearts and minds can go to dark places when life is harsh. God can be silent. Fears and doubts can get almost overwhelming. Yet there is hope if our eyes and ears are open. Julian of Norwich lost her entire family (and most of her village) to the bubonic plague in the Middle Ages. Yet despite that she wrote, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

In John 12:24 Jesus says, “I tell you for certain that a grain of wheat that falls on the ground will never be more than one grain unless it dies. But if it dies, it will produce lots of wheat.” Seeds germinate in the darkness, in the dying, in the losses, and in the pain, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. A harvest of righteousness is promised.

Will I let temptation, distress, persecution, worries, and financial stress become a fertile place for spiritual growth? Or will they make me close my eyes and heart to what God is planting?

PRAYER
Oh, Father! Keep walking with me in all the dark places of life. Stick with me in the valley of the shadow of death. Help me keep my eyes and ears open. Help me be fruitful and faithful. Help me not to worry or get crushed under the weight of it all. Unless you are with me I’m certain to fail. Thank you that you promise never to let me go. Thank you that you know what I need before I even ask!