Instructive Moment About Hearing

For me this is a story about abundance, waste, and, as Gire points out... the uncertain soil of the human heart. Jesus explains this parable to his disciples, one of the few times he is cited as doing so. He must have explained his words more often, but those times didn't make it into the Gospels. God is the sower, the seed is the word, we are the soil. And it is only the good soil that bears more than 100 fold. I can buy that. But is there perhaps another interpretation within this interpretation? Birds have to eat. Withered shoots make compost. The seed produced no crop in those places not conducive to growth, but it did produce. And what it produced was waste. We are well acquainted in our culture with waste and the difficult disposal of it. Landfills abound and toxic chemicals are rusting out of their containers and seeping into the ground water. But the waste in this parable was useful waste... something that was transformed for later growth. Birds fly and poop, and some of that seed will be scattered elsewhere, maybe in ground that has become more fertile by the compost of those dead weeds. Why would a sower waste time and energy scattering seed in inappropriate places? Because there is always hope, and always time for redemption.