Jesus is giving us a rather lengthy explanation of the parable of the sower and the whole reason behind Him employing parables to tell the disciples what He wants them to know. What it imporatant to take away here is that when it comes to us and God: God sows the Word that gets planted in ourselves and, if we are fertile, the mysteries will unfold.
The unfortunate thing is that the reality of it is that we are often cluttered with rocks, thorns and weeds and thus the Word of God has nothing to take root of. Indeed, we all have a spiritual dimension to ourselves and we all have the ability to pray and commune with God and experience what that means. We also, though, are humans living and surviving in this world so ther are far more things we need to worry about and have to consume ourselves with. We all need to work, pay the bills, save for retirement and find jobs if we lost them. We have things we want to buy, things we like to do, things we wish we could do, and things we should not do. We all like to consume our time by keeping busy and often times, it is those things that cause the greatest stresses in our lives that take the wheel of our lives. It gets quite difficult to meditate on teh mysteries of teh Kingdom of God when you have looming debt and a lot of unknowns in the near future. You take all this and add the stresses of family relationships, love relationships and SIN and you have a very rocky and thorny garden inside of you!
What do we do then? Are we to abandon our lives and become irresponsible by not taking care of things? No, we need to do these 'earthly' things because they are required to sustain ourselves and live in this world. They are necessary, but should not and cannot be the driving force.
The apostles ask Jesus, why do you speak in parables? Why can't you just tell us what we are to know and do? Jesus tells them that the truth of what they are to know is greater than what a mere imperative statement could give them. Indeed, the truths are mysterious and they need to unfold and take root in the deepest depth of their being; once that happens, they will know.
We are not called to be Carthusian monks who live in solitude for 22 hrs a day praying, but we are called to clean teh garden! Like I said, the demands and realities of life will not go away, I can guarentee you that. Jesus knew this. If it was easy for us to live here as we ought, then a simple statement from Chirst of what we ought to know would ahve sufficed. But, He didn't. He knew that in order for us to see God and experinece God as we should and as we were created to, we would need to have that experience and vision grow from teh inside out. Once you have the mysteries of God and the Kingdom growing and unfolding in your heart, then those take the wheel in your life. Yes, you still have the same worries, anxieties and demands this world puts on you, but you do them, not out of priority, but out of neccessity. Your only prioroty becomes loving. Loving is how we live out our experinece of God.
You have to carve out time to tend to your spiritual garden everyday. Just as we do for the ones in our backyards, we need to do the same for the ones in our hearts.
Let the Word of God rest in you. whenever a rock or thorn gets in there, push it out and go on. make that garden a priority in the midst of your life. slowly, as it starts to grow and blossom within you, you will see greater purpose to everything you endure for that garden.
The rewards are eternal and the fruit is heavenly
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