sower
 I have just returned from holiday. I’m so sorry if you are now sitting there thinking – ‘It’s all right for him. I’ve had to work through the summer’. To make things worse for you, I have been where the sun shone brightly and the air was warm. However, as a result, the land was dry, scorched and brown; the ground hard and rocky.
Whenever one returns from other countries it is very noticeable how green and lush everything back home appears. William Blake wrote that we would not cease until ‘we have built Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant land.’ I’m not sure about the song, but green and pleasant England certainly is! When I got back to the garden it was like a jungle. I almost expected to see a tiger or two lurking in the undergrowth but all I found were ants who bury into the lush grass and reap their own particular brand of havoc.
When Jesus spoke of the sower who went out to sow his seed, the farmer in question would never have had a lush fertile garden in his mind. His reality was dry scrubby land with rocks, thistles and thorns. If a Palestinian farmer received a 7% increase from his crop he would have been delighted. Seed fell on the path, among the rocks and into the weeds. However, in Jesus’ story some seed fell on good soil and produced a crop. Then Jesus staggered his listeners. “This is what the Kingdom of God is like”, he said.
When we sow kingdom seeds, that is when we love our neighbour, when we stop for the one in front of us, when we reach out in kindness, when we speak a word prompted by the Holy Spirit, when we pray for the sick, when we give our resources away, this is the kind of return you will receive. As it says in Matthew Ch 13 v8-9 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop-- a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. He who has ears, let him hear." That is staggeringly more than any farmer would have expected!
What Jesus does far exceeds our expectation for he does immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.
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