Following on from last week’s post about farmers, this week I’m on to sowing seeds, which is not too far removed. My current attempt at growing ‘crops’ on my balcony has led to some interesting and odd results.

The coriander that I transplanted seems to be thriving in its new pot. It vacated the old one for a yet-to-be-flowering plant I got from my god-parents when I visited them back in July. So far, so good on that one too. The parsley has appeared and despite not doing too much yet, it appears to have an aim and plan in life to grow. This is more than can be said for the basil.

Not sure what’s going on there. Nor am I sure what’s going on in the longer rectangular bed where I sowed a number of dwarf beans. Only one has sprouted.

What’s that about?

All this looking at sprouts and thinking about what on earth seeds are getting up to on my balcony, reminds me very much of Jesus’ parable of the sower. Being in an agrarian society, Jesus often linked his explanations of spiritual things to farming symbolism.

People plant lots of things into our lives, some good; some bad. We can chose whether we let that ‘seed sown’ grow into something in our lives or whether we reject that idea and move on to something else.

It’s like that for spiritual things too. We can choose to listen to God and ‘grow’ into the kind of person he wants us to be or we can ignore him and ‘not bear fruit’ in the way he wants.

Sometimes it’s to do with the ‘soil’ we find ourselves in. Sometimes the things going on in our lives, or the people we are around make it possible or impossible to go a certain way. Jesus described it as being ‘choked by weeds’. We literally have to uproot ourselves if we’re going to ‘grow’ in a certain direction.

Other times the soil is good; helpful; conducive to growth.

And other times, as Jesus says, the birds come along and eat up the seed and nothing goes into the soil.

I’m starting to wonder if that’s the case in my round red pot where absolutely nothing has sprouted. Maybe I didn’t actually put anything in there (I’m sure I did though…).

At least there’s one bean, going solo, in my rectangular pot. Maybe it’s a good analogy for the spiritual life.

Even if no one else around you is ‘growing’, it doesn’t mean you can’t.

Maybe the bean is trying to teach us a lesson.

Yours in learning,

Alison