Meditations from Zion

The parable of the sower still resonates despite our modern culture. It is a simple tale and yet each of us can probably identify with one or more of the seeds in the story. In fact, I’m beginning to believe that I have lived them all at one point or another. And not necessarily in the order told.

Still others [people], like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.  Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.” [Mark 4:18-20]

The worries of this life and the desires for other things are the most insidious traps, for they absorb the brain’s thoughts. Like any computer, the RAM can only handle so much at once. And when I fill my head with tapes of concerns, old conversations, looped memories, overdue notices, commercials, and Facebook pictures of all the “other” happy people, there is no room for the workings of Spirit. I crowd out Spirit. It’s not that I don’t trust God in theory, but I don’t leave enough space for God to work.

The good seed hears the word but then “accepts” the word before crops can spring forth. Accepting is a process the involves the conscious as well as the unconscious mind.

In the same way that I have been simplifying my house, it is time to streamline the mind. Set aside what I cannot change and give God the room needed to cultivate a better way.