Who are you?

You could answer that question in different ways. What is your personality like? What do you like, and what do you dislike? What is the family like that you come from? What is your culture? What are your gifts? What is your relationship to God?

Jesus is asking about the last one in the Parable of the Sower. This is a story about a farmer who scatters seeds on different kinds of ground. Some of it grows, some of it doesn't, but only some of it thrives enough to produce a crop. (If you don't know the whole story, take a look at it in Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23.)

As Jesus explains to his followers, each kind of ground represents a different kind of person. First there's the person who Satan keeps from ever getting the message of God's good news. Second is the person who gets the message but can only live it out when times are easy. As soon as life gets hard, this person gives up on God. Third is the person who gets the message, but is too distracted by the things of this world to really do much with it. And fourth is the person who takes the message to heart, and starts living it out every day. This fourth person is the one who "bears a crop"—who passes the "seed" of the good news on to others.

Which one are you, at this point in your life? Can you give an example or tell a story that explains why you think that "ground" fits you best? Have you always been that one, or have you been different kinds of ground at different times? (Who or what changed you, and how?) And here's the one to really think about: if God took a spiritual roto-tiller to your life—loosening up the soil, taking out the rocks and weeds—what would that be?

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