Sowing And Reaping

             He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.” (Mark 4:26-29)

 

 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. (I Corinthians 3:6)

 

This is the second of three parables Jesus told about seeds, as recorded in Mark 4. In The Parable of The Sower, the seeds are the Word of God, which the sower (whether God or a human) scatters here, there, and everywhere. And each person is represented by one of four types of soil, and the response of the seed depends on the type of soil.

Jesus doesn’t explain this parable and doesn’t take the type of soil into account, but from what happens, it would seem to be good soil. And the plants grow without further attention from the farmer. God provides the mechanism by which the seeds grow.

As a gardener, I get anxious about the seeds I plant. Some gardeners sprout their seeds between two pieces of damp paper towel, so they can only bother to plant the seeds that germinate. I tend to be more old-fashioned, either planting two or more seeds in a peat pellet or broadcasting them. Sometimes I find the happy medium between those and plant two or more seeds in specific locations. Then I worry, water, and weed as I wait for them to sprout. Once they get going, I’ll admit that I’m more like the farmer in the parable. I probably don’t pay as much attention as I should. No doubt, I could learn details of cellular division and such, but once the plant is growing. I let it grow until it has produced the crop I want. Since I don’t raise grain, the sickle isn’t usually my means of harvest, but part of my goal in harvesting is to end up with seeds I can plant next spring.  

Even if I knew the precise mechanism of the growth in scientific detail, I doubt I would “know” it in the sense of thinking about it all the time. It’s sort of like being asked if you remember something. You may not, until they mention it. If we’re talking about that kind of knowledge, the person sowing and reaping could be God, but the notion that God doesn’t know how these things happen – as in being unaware of and not just currently considering – makes me uncomfortable with the notion that the person sowing and reaping is God.

However, the spiritual application is still a good one if we’re talking about people sowing the Word. In that case, the one sowing doesn’t know how it is going to affect the person in whom it is sown. As Paul noted, he planted, Apollos watered. God caused the growth. This should give us hope when the person doesn’t respond to what we say in the way we want.