Growth & Death

DAILY BYTE

The Parable of the Sower contains some images which teach us something of how growth occurs in the Kingdom. The first lesson is this:

Simply put, if we don’t grow, we will die!

In this parable, in every instance where significant growth does not take root, the resulting imagery is deathly – both stark and desolate. There are birds that gobble up, shallow and arid soils, rocky paths, scorching sun and choking thorns.

Did you know that there is a medical designation for babies who are not growing and developing as they should be? Doctors will write on the medical charts FTT – which means ‘failure to thrive.’

This is because thriving is the natural condition of human beings. It is what a life is created by God to do. When something is stagnant and not growing, then it is dying. This is as true for our spirituality, as it is in anything else.

God wants us to grow! God wants us to love someone tomorrow that we could not love yesterday. God wants sin and selfishness to grip us less and less as the years go by. God wants us to grapple with and nurture forgiveness and generosity and hospitality.

Because if we do not grow, then we will wither and die.

Jesus’ explanation of this parable mentions hard heartedness being like rocky soil, superficiality being like shallow soil, and the worries of this world being like choking thorns.

If you think about it, all of those – hard heartedness, shallowness, stress and worry - are all actually symptoms of disconnectedness. They are like dashboard warning lights which begin to flash when we lose touch with what is really important to God. They are examples of what happens when we allow things other than God to define and shape us and we become like those trees you find bent into weird shapes in an attempt to find the sun, because we bend ourselves horribly as we grow in all the wrong directions.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Lord God, I know that you created me to grow and to thrive, but so often I base my life upon things other than you which results in me becoming hard hearted and shallow. Help me to always be rooted in you, so that I may grow and thrive as you created me to. Amen.

FOCUS VERSE

Mark 4:4-7 NRSV

And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain.