“A SOWER WENT FORTH”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26713, 6 March 1948, Page 2

“A SOWER WENT FORTH”

EVERYMAN’S ASSIGNMENT Written for the Otago Daily Times By the Rev. Gardner Miller When Christ told stories people listened. He had the true story-teller’s art of arousing interest. And these stories of His, although told nearly 20U0 yeai's ago, are still the world’s best. One of them, the story of the Sower and the Seed, is so well known that thousands of people who have never read it know it; it has become pare of our oral heritage. This is so, apart from its tremendous spiritual significance, largely because it is just th<? story of one of the common men and his job. Christ had an eye for the ordinary man. • Nothing was common in His day than seeing a man sowing seed. We are apt to forget that the Jews are essentially an agricultural people. Sc when Jesus began the story that day (Matthew xiii, 3), while He sat on the side of a fishing boat (what a striking contrast, fishing and farming!), the people were instantly alert, for the new Teacher was speaking about something they were thoroughly acquainted with. Here let me say that a secret of the art of story telling is to be able to see the significance of commonplace things. Jesus saw inside the ordinary tasks and sights the ordinary man and woman did and saw every day. Hens and chickens, grass and flowers, bread and seed, the wind, the sky; all very ordinary things, but what significance He saw in them all! To His hearers that day what He told them about the soil, the seed and the sower, was commonplace, until the significance of the commonplace startled their minds and made them think. They were made to see that while the soil had the faculty of fruitifying, the seed had life to be let loose, the sower had the priceless attribute of hope, behind them all, and in them all, was God. They were brought face to face with the Creator of all things. And unless any of us think that this story has only to do with farming matters, read on and ponder over the interpretation Jesus gave to His disciples. We will become aware that to sow is

Everyman’s Assignment. No man, woman or child is exempt from the common task of sowing seed. And no human being will ever be exempt from the consequences of careless sowing. A girl who grows up with the dominant idea of getting all she can get without concerning herself with the rights and comforts of others is sowing seed that will produce a harvest, in the lives of others, that might well lead to spiritual blight. It is so easy to sow and forget, but the law of return, of cause and effect, is unvarying. The girl in question may quite easily be contented with what she has done with her life, but in the judgment it is what she has done to others that will matter most. The young man who is determined to get on at any cost (especially to others) received his reward—of course, he does —but if in the process of “ getting on,” he pushes other people off the highway of honourable business, both in commerce and in the business of living, then, depend upon it, he will be called into account.

God is no man’s tool; He certainly is no man’s fool. Whatsoever a man sows, he shall also (note the word also) reap. And the reaping obeys a law that is beyond the sower's control.

Heart-breaking Harvests

I wonder how many of us realise that soil is broken ir the process of growth leading to harvest. I mean that in human relationships we break down the hopes and longings of others, and leave them, hurt and maybe with a jaundiced outlook, all because we are determined on gaining our own ends. A drinker, ,a liar, a gossip; cruelty, sensuality, selfishness, all smash into other people’s lives, and sometimes producing the most heart-breaking harvest. No man liveth unto himself—you cannot contract yourself ou. of society—and so what you sow definitely affects others. No man dieth unto himself; he may destroy others through reckless sowing. What you sow has also an effect upon yourself. You cannot sow selfishness and expect to pass among the members of your family and those who know you. in the office or iactory, as a glowing example of unselfishness. You are soon found out. But I think it goes further. I tend to believe that what dominates your sou! will shape your face. I have not the space to retell the story here of The Great Stone Image,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, but get hold of it for yourself and read it carefully and you will see the truth of my remark that you become like what you think. The Divine Sower Christ Himself is a sower and our human lives are the soil into which He drops His seed. Unlike the soil that covers the earth, we have the power of rejection, of eruption, of sheer irresponsiveness. You will agree with me that many of us would never have known a foretaste of the heavenly harvest if we had not been broken. The seed of Christ’s sowing would never have found a way into our hearts, but for that illness, that loss, that grief, that experience, which broke us up. When things go well with us and we have neither ache nor pain we are apt to live as if the story of Jesus and what He did for men was something out of an old book. The seed He has Jiopefully planted in our lives is untended or overgrown. That, I am afraid, can be said of multitudes. But the sower is still hopeful—l don’t think He ever gives up hope. But what we miss when we are irresponsive to the Divine seed! Life is incomplete without Christ. With Him in the daily life, there is no promise at all that we shall be exempt from trouble; but there is the joyous experience of His companionship and the sure knowledge that ultimately all things will work together for our good. What shall the harvest be is a question we should all face now.