18.04 | Seeds, Soil & Slime

Mark 4:1-25

‘Again he began to teach beside the sea. And a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea, and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. And he was teaching them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: “Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow.’

Mark 4:1-3

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I heard a new phrase recently: AI slime. With the recent explosion of AI into the digital world, it’s a phrase used to describe the massive volume of content already online that is generated artificially. With artificial intelligence now able to respond to and generate extraordinary amounts of content, the internet is fast filling up with a kind of digital slime. The internet is literally drowning itself in data.

Drowning in data is a phrase we’d have resonated with even before the rise of AI. From blogs and books and podcasts and Youtube, to advertising and memes and TED talks and TikTok life hacks, we’re beyond glutted with content. The concern of our age is no longer about access to content, but filtering out the good content form the bad. Ours is not a problem of quantity, but quality. There’s a lot of slime out there.

However, there’s another angle on the content that we access. 

And this other angle is Jesus’ word to us today.

He does it with an agricultural parable. A sower and seeds. The sower isn’t especially careful, but launches seed all over the place, in the general vicinity of his field, but not paying too much attention to where it lands. Some lands on the path, and gets trodden on. Some gets picked off by birds. Some falls among weeds. And some (thankfully) lands on healthy soil, and grows and multiplies and generates life.

It’s a parable about sharing content. But there’s a key difference.

The content He is describing is the Good News of God’s inbreaking Kingdom. It is the greatest, most hopeful, most revolutionary, most truthful, and most beautiful piece of content every shared. The quality of the content is unprecedented. 

However, in Jesus’ parable, He points not to the quality of the content, but to the condition of the heart that receives it. Truth, it seems, is not merely found in quality content; it can only be truly found by a receptive heart. 

This is a little offensive. It’s uncomfortable. It’s revealing.

But, when we hold it up to scrutiny, it also rings true.

It rings true when we recall that the best advice often gets rejected. It rings true when words intended to heal are received as words that harm. It rings true when we realise our parents were right all along. It rings true when we realise that those critical words we believed for so many years were totally untrue. 

Compare your heart to His warnings.

The path and the enemy. Truths can be stolen. Do you consider, when that good idea seems suddenly implausible, or the vocation you so strongly used to believe in seems so ludicrous, or the very goodness of the Father feels like fairytale, that the reason behind this may be that the enemy may be stealing truth from your life, like a bird pecking seed from a path? This will happen to you. Disciples learn to contend it.

The rocks and superficiality. We might applaud and celebrate great quotes and memes and verses, but hearing truth is not the same as allowing it to permeate the fabric of our souls. Great truths sink roots through continual interaction with our thoughts and lives until that word becomes our internal reality. A truth cheaply received will only bear cheap fruit in our lives. Deep transformation comes in the slow work of prayer, meditation, and memorisation that ultimately leads to transformation.

The thorns. When truth lands among competing anxieties. When we know what is right, but the things we worry about drag our attention into anxiety and frenetically trying to hold all things together, rather than allowing those truths of substance to change how we see and live and act in a world where we’re always going to know pressure.

The good soil. And here’s the beautiful truth. When the things of truth settle, when we return to them day by day, allowing our souls to be immersed in the words of His world rather than in the words of anxiety and lack and fear and competition, fruitfulness comes. It is the natural outcome of a heart that isn’t trying very hard to love, but that is becoming loving. It is the consequence of a soul that walks to a different rhythm to the world around. It is the natural growth of goodness that emerges from a life where the Good News of Jesus has taken deep root.

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Reflect:

Consider the four kinds of seed that land. Which feels the greatest danger for you right now?

Bring this to God. What might you do to help prepare more fertile ground for His truths?

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Pray:

Father in heaven,

I give you afresh the soil of my heart.

Would you protect it from the stealing, killing, lying schemes of the enemy;

Would you sink it deeper than the rocks of superficiality;

Would you clear it of the thorns of anxiety;

That the things of truth,

Where the culture and norms and truths and hope of your Kingdom

Become the lived atmosphere of my soul,

Unto a harvest of beauty and goodness and life.

In Jesus’ Name,

Amen

Old Testament: 

For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:

Judges 10:1-12:7 | Psalm 50:16-23