“Forever I will maintain my love for my servant.” (Psalms 89:29)
“Praise the LORD, for he is good; for his mercy endures forever.” (Psalms 136:1)
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)
We see it repeated so many times in so many ways: God loves us.
I find humor in the Gospel today (Mark 4: 1-20) because Jesus finds it necessary to explain His parable of the sower to His Apostles in language they can understand. A book title comes to mind: "God's Love for Dummies". Our reactions to life's happenings reveal how much we truly believe that God loves us and cares about us in all things and no matter what. Jesus explains this to His Apostles (and thankfully us, too) using 4 different types of soils.
Sometimes we listen to the truth only on the surface (the path), because we've been hardened by lies, both big and small. We hear the truth, but the winds of distraction or turmoil or false impressions blow it away. For example, we hear that God forgives us when we repent, but we have a hard time admitting our sins, because when we were children we didn't understand the love behind the punishments that our parents meted out. So today we'd rather fool ourselves into thinking that a sin is not a sin in order to avoid what is really a wrong image of God the Father.
Sometimes we accept the truth joyfully, but we forget it when hit by hardships or persecution (the rocky ground). We feel God's love only while life is easy. When the rocks stub our toes, we forget about God's love and we try to deal with the problems our own way; we get rid of the person who's hurting us, or we jump to solutions without praying for discernment, or we get angry with God instead of connecting our sufferings to the Cross of Christ.
Sometimes we listen only half-heartedly to the truth. We let worldliness, anxieties, cravings, ‘things’ (the thorns) choke it off. We know about God's love, but we neglect to quiet down long enough to bask in it. We get too busy with our own agendas, too busy solving problems, too busy rushing into decisions and the fulfillment of our own desires. We fail to wait on God's perfect timing and wisdom.
But sometimes we allow the truth to penetrate into the depths of our hearts (the rich soil), and it bears much fruit. Think about the richness of your soil and notice what's growing in your daily circumstances. What decisions and behaviors are producing God's love and nourishing others? Here is where you realize and truly believe that God loves you.
To let the truth sink in deeply, we have to dig out the falsehoods that we believe, and we have to learn why they are false. We have to realize that every trouble can strengthen us and that we are closer to Christ when we embrace our crosses instead of dumping them in an elusive search for an easier life. We have to identify our worldliness, let it go, and keep our eyes on Jesus.
Jesus is the Divine Sower and His Word is the Seed. We should realize that we are also called to act in His person by sowing the seed of His Word in our own lives. Just as He is willing to sow with the realization that not every seed will produce fruit, we, too, must be ready and willing to accept this same fact.
The truth is that, very often, the labor we offer to God for the building up of His Kingdom produces little or no manifest fruit in the end. Hearts become hardened and the good we do, or the Word we share, does not grow.
One lesson we must take from this parable is that the spreading of the Gospel requires effort and commitment on our part. We must be willing to toil and labor for the Gospel despite whether or not people are willing to receive it. And we must not allow ourselves to become discouraged if the results are not what we had hoped for.
No comments:
Post a Comment