Be Careful What You Sow Where
AM Psalm 72 • PM Psalm 119:73-96
Gen. 42:18-28 • 1 Cor. 5:9-6:8 • Mark 4:1-20
Our assigned readings for today all grow (pun intended) out of the passage from Mark, the Parable of the Sowers. As Mark shares Jesus’s words with us: depending on what type of ground we choose to sow our seeds, we will have different results. If we choose barren land, nothing will grow; rocky ground will net us a little plant but one without roots to last; and if there are thorns in our garden, they will choke out what we have planted. It is only the fertile soil that will produce an ample harvest. (yes, I confess poking the soil of my dormant flower garden today to see if anything looked promising and, blessedly, I saw tiny green shoots!)
The selection from Genesis 42 speaks of a famine. The barren land of Canaan was not producing food so Jacob sent ten of his sons to Egypt to buy grain. Little did Jacob realize that he was creating a family reunion with his son Joseph whom some of his other children had previously sold into slavery, Obviously, the barren land was reflecting the barren emotions and behaviors of members of Jacob’s family. To his credit, Joseph forgave his brothers when he realized who they were, saying that God had planned for him to be in Egypt to save his family from the famine.
Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible, is interestingly an acrostic poem with each section beginning with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet (Aleph, Beth, etc). The writer (Ezra? David? Solomon?) speaks of affliction at the hands of the “arrogant …who persecuted him with a lie” (86). He longs for the comfort of God’s word in his rocky world inhabited by “double-minded foes” (113). Related in sentiment, Paul cautions the church in Corinth against allowing sinful behaviors, such as malice, wickedness, covetousness, and idolatry to crowd out the newly planted Christian church in Corinth.
Psalm 72 presents us with the fertile soil in which new life can grow. “May he come down like rain upon the mown grass, like showers that water the earth” (6-7). Fittingly Isaac Watts’ beautiful hymn – one of my favorites – is a musical adaptation of this Psalm: “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun.”
Written by Karen Hodges
...who is delighted that March has arrived and with it the seeds of spring.