Sowing Seed, Luke 8:4-8

I just finished Luke chapter 8. In vss. 4-8 Jesus tells the illustration (“parable”) of the man who sows seed. Jesus says that some seed fell on the roadside, on the rocky soil, amongst thorny grows, and finally on “good soil.”

That made me wonder: Why was the sower so careless with where he threw his seed? ‘Why didn’t he just scatter it where the soil was “good” and rich with nutrients. His yield would probably have been better.’ If you’ve ever seen how the ancients sowed seed, you might better understand Jesus’ illustration. Naturally, as the sower approached the edge of his property, as he scattered the seed, some was bound to go beyond the boundaries of his plantation.

But Jesus wasn’t giving an agricultural lesson. His listeners readily understood the common challenges of sowing a field. He was talking about the preaching of the Good News. His illustration demonstrates God’s indiscriminate love for mankind. The preaching (casting the seed out) is done without regard to people’s race, status or intellect. God gives his hope for mankind freely to all. Their outward characteristics are not what makes any individual roadkill, rocky or thorny. It is who they are inside. Since we, as God’s fellow workers cannot read hearts, we also indiscriminately spread the good news and let each one’s response dictate what type of soil they are. And that is why, by necessity, some of our seed-like activity will need to fall even in places where it may turn out unproductive. We may attempt to plant, but it is only God who can make a heart grow with appreciative response.

Joel 2:13 Rip Apart Heart

Pictorial Language Series

Joel 2:13 Rip apart your hearts, and not your garments, And return to Jehovah your God,

Back when Joel was alive, a contemporary way of demonstrating grief was was to rip the front of the garment apart. what God is counselling is to make more than an outward appearance of grief. Instead it should be a sincere heartfelt grief that leads to repentance and earnest concerted effort to please God through obedience.

Human Compassion And The Vagus Nerve

The TV program “Brain Games” is an interesting Discovery channel science program. Although it typically espouses the evolutionary theory as an explanation of why our bodies are the way they are, there was one particular episode on the subject of Compassion (Brain Games S04E01 Compassion) that caught my attention. Starting at 07:13 and running to 08:00 (a 47-second segment), the observation was made that the “vagus nerve….runs from the base of the brain to the heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, and intestines.”

As a Bible reader, I found this very interesting because from that above list, the heart, kidneys, and intestines are all mentioned as related to the person we are inside. True, the application that modern readers attach to those passages are in a figurative sense, but the question remains why would Bible writers pick those organs? Believers are convinced that the major reason that is true is that God is the real author of the Bible and the creator of our bodies. Although he may not have explained it, he knows full well how we are made and the secretaries (human writers) of the Bible faithfully conveyed those thoughts.