Daily Devotion
From Earth to Heaven
Created: Wednesday, 04 March 2020 21:00
Hits: 979
MARK 4:3-9
"Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow. Read more
Meditation
We leave the interpretation of this parable until we come to the interpretation Mark gives us, and for the moment we consider it only as a specimen of Jesus' parabolic teaching in action. The scene is the lakeside; Jesus is sitting in the boat just off the shore. The shore shelves gently down to the water's edge, and makes a natural amphitheater for the crowd. Even as He talks Jesus sees a sower busy sowing seed in the fields beside the lake. "Look!" he said, "The sower went out to sow." Here is the whole essence of the parabolic method.
Jesus started from the here and now to get to there and then. He started from a thing that was happening at the moment on earth in order to lead men's thoughts to heaven; he started from something that all men could see to get to the things that are invisible; he started from something that all men knew to get to something which they had never a yet realized. That was the very essence of Jesus' teaching. He did not bewilder men by starting with things that were strange and abstruse and involved; He started with the simplest things that even a child could understand.
By so doing, Jesus showed that he believed there was a real kinship between earth and heaven. Jesus would not have agreed that 'earth was a desert'. He believed that in the ordinary, common, everyday things of life men could see God. Jesus taught men to see the operation of God in the regular and the normal-in the rising of the sun and the falling of the rain and the growth of the grass. For Jesus the world was not a lost and evil place; it was the garment of the living God. Jesus finds in the common things of life a countless source of signs that lead people to God if they only read them right.
My Life Application
The very essence of the parables is that they were spontaneous and unrehearsed. Jesus looks around, He sees the sower and that sower becomes His text. Apply this method yourself, and see what God will do!
My Prayer and Praise
(My personal praise report!)
Last week I went to a podiatrist because I was having a problem with my big toe on my right foot. The doctor did surgery and told to come back in a week. When I returned a week later, he looked at my foot and to his surprise, exclaimed, "Your foot is healed!"
He didn't expect the healing; he was prepared to do more surgery. Hallelujah, I am healed!)
