I was pondering the story of the Sower yesterday. Most of us, I would say, have this image of a man with a basket of seed going out and throwing this seed willy nilly across some land, as if the whole fertilizing and preparing of land is a modern invention. But the more I pondered the more I wondered how Jesus’ first listeners heard the story. I am also wondering how we would reinterpret this so we “got it” with lives now where we are so far removed from farmers and farming. I think I did a bit of that back in October 2025 with Mustard Seed and the two posts that followed
I am sure back then the farmers went through their fields picking up the stones, getting rid of the weeds and thistles, putting fertilizer on the land, etc, etc. We hear stories of oxen and yokes so farmers definitely made furrows for their seed but we seem to put both these stories in isolation. One the oxen making the furrows for the seed but then of the Sower randomly throwing seed hither and thither.
I think Jesus’ audience would have pondered what on earth was going on with a farmer who hadn’t prepared his field before he sowed the seed and I think this is the key to the story. I think Jesus was reminding his listeners that if they really wanted to know what was going on in his parables and the teachings and even in all they learned in Torah school as children and in the synagogue, they needed to do some work first, that things weren’t random.
We need to be preparing ourselves so we have “good soil” before we go to church, before we sit down to read the Bible, before we pray. We need to hand over our cares to Jesus, give ourselves time whether that is making notes, still quietly, but whatever it is we need to give time for things to percolate.
We were discussing percolate in my writing group the other day and when you percolate you make something stronger, have more flavour.
We need to prepare our hearts to truly know that God, the Creator of the whole Universe, cares for us personally and individually and really is rooting for us and making a way for us. Even if it isn’t what we think is best. Part of our preparing is to step out of the way. As my friend told me the other day “God always gives you what you need but it might not always be what you think you want“. And this is a lady who has gone through some really tough times and not got the answers she would have liked but no matter what keeps trusting that God is giving her what she needs. She keeps on having the good soil that God can keep pouring into.
So in my opinion when Jesus first told that tale his audience would have seen that the Sower was ill prepared, hadn’t prepared his ground, was not believing for a good harvest but was just chucking things out and “hoping for the best”. I think they would have totally got what Jesus was saying – about preparing the ground – even if they hadn’t then gone and done the work.
That was another thing that struck me – how often all of us know what we should do to really live in peace with God and the world, but how many of us rarely do.
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organised how I would fit everything in – including my coffee time. I went downstairs at 6am to get a cup of tea to take back to my room to journal a bit and found the kitchen floor flooded. So mopped the floor and wondered how the rain had got in over our very high back door step. An hour later came back downstairs and put on a load of washing. When rinsing dishes after breakfast I had to get out the sink plunger to try to unblock the sink muttering to myself as I wondered what I had allowed to go in the sink that should have gone in the food waste. Then the washing machine made a strange gurgle and unloaded its water all across the kitchen floor! Hurriedly turned off the washing machine and shouted to husband.
into the drains and blocked them up. In fact yesterday out my study window I watched the small residential street opposite fill with water and then have to be pumped clear by the local water board.
Aspirational Adventures 