Good Soil?

But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty." Matthew 13. 18 - 23

Jesus' parable today metaphorizes the soil of our hearts and how well it receives the love and message of the Good News. If our hearts are shallow, the metaphorical seeds of the word of God might root but they will soon wither away because there is no nourishment for them. If our hearts are prickly with thorny thoughts and issues and attitudes, the word of God will be choked out. But the parable suggests that if our hearts are like good soil, the love and message of the gospel will grow and flourish, will have deep roots and will bear fruit and bear it abundantly.

So what does your good soil look like? Of what is it made and what fruit does it produce abundantly? What is your heart's fertilizer and how often do you need to apply it? And also we must ask ourselves, what are the thorns in our hearts that choke out the love and where are our hearts so shallow that love cannot take root?

This passage below from Louise Erdrich's novel The Painted Drum speaks

to me about all of the questions above, reminding me of the sweetness that falls from the tree where I sit when I am wondering, and there I will go to ponder these questions today. Hope you can find a tree or even a spot in creation where you can open your heart and have the courage to make room for the seed of the message of God to grow and flourish and rain down heaps of sweetness.

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could." Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

My forest bathing spot on the edge of the Johns River Gorge~