Planting Seeds

The people who followed Jesus loved to hear Him teach. He always made things easy to understand! One way he often taught was by telling stories that we call "parables". These are simple stories that the people could understand because they were about common things they knew about.

One day Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who went out to plant some seed in his field. He put a leather bag filled with seed around his shoulder. As he walked across the field he would reach into the bag, fill his hand with seed and throw it out across the field as he walked."

"Not all of the seed went exactly where he wanted it to go. Some fell on the path people had walked on. The ground there was so hard and packed down the seed couldn't grow, so the birds came and ate it. Some seed fell down around rocks in the ground. There wasn't enough dirt for it to grow for very long, so as soon as it came up it died because the sun was too hot and burned it up. Some of the seed fell in with the weeds and thorns. It grew for a little while, but soon the weeds, which were bigger and stronger, used up all the food in the ground so the plants died. But some of the seed fell on the good ground where the farmer wanted it and it grew up into big, strong plants and turned into a lot of grain for the farmer and his family to eat."

Later, his special followers, the twelve disciples, asked him, "What did you mean when you told the story of the seeds?"

"The word of God is like the seed," he told them. "Sometimes the word falls on ears that won't listen, just like the hard ground. Sometimes people will hear the word of God and be happy about it, but soon they lose interest, just like the seed in the ground with the rocks. Sometimes people who hear the word and believe it, but soon they become more interested in sinning instead of obeying God's word, so they too stop believing. But sometimes people hear God's word and believe it. In fact, they love it so much that they go out and tell others and they go tell others and they tell others... and before long, hundreds of other people have heard it. This is like the seed that fell on the good ground and grew into so much grain."

Which kind of a person do you want to be? One who tells others about God's Word? I hope so.