Seeds and Soil: Mark 4:1-20

The crowd had grown so large that Jesus stepped into a boat and pushed off from shore. He sat on the wooden seat, rocking gently with the waves, while the multitude spread across the beach like a living carpet—thousands of faces turned toward the water, ears straining to catch every word.

"Listen!" he called, and the word cut through the murmuring. "A farmer went out to sow his seed."

They knew this scene. They had lived it. Every spring, farmers walked their fields with seed bags slung across their shoulders, broadcasting grain in wide arcs across the soil.

"As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up."

Everyone had seen it—seeds bouncing on the hard-packed footpaths, crows descending in a black cloud, seed gone before it could root.

"Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root."

The shallow soil of Galilee, thin layers of dirt over limestone shelves. Green shoots in spring, dead stalks by summer. All enthusiasm, no depth.

"Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain."

Thorns. Those relentless, creeping weeds that wrapped around good plants and strangled them slowly. Everyone had fought them. Everyone had lost ground to them.

"Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times."

A hundred times! That was miraculous yield—the kind farmers dreamed about, the kind that filled barns and fed villages through winter.

"Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear."

Later, in private, the twelve asked what it meant. And Jesus unlocked the parable: the seed was the word. The soils were human hearts. The path-hearts were hard, the word snatched by Satan before it could penetrate. The rocky hearts received with joy but had no root—trouble came, and they withered. The thorny hearts let the worries of life and the deceitfulness of wealth strangle the word until it produced nothing.

But the good soil—those who heard the word, accepted it, and produced a crop—they were the point of everything. Thirty, sixty, a hundred times what was sown. The kingdom multiplying through hearts that received and retained and bore fruit.

Which soil are you? Jesus did not ask the question aloud. He did not have to.