We’ve been taught that God is efficient. Strategic.
That divine wisdom means calculated investment, measured risk, resources reserved for likely returns.
But this Sower throws seed everywhere. On paths where it can’t penetrate, on rocks where it can’t root, among thorns that will strangle it.
He’s demonstrating an economy of absurd generosity, where grace gets scattered, not strategically targeted.
SOWER
A farmer went out to sow his seed.
Not like the careful farmers who test each handful of soil, who calculate yields before they plant, who guard their precious grain for ground that guarantees return.
This farmer walked his field with a different logic entirely.
His hand swept wide, almost reckless. Seed flew from his fingers in generous arcs, scattered by wind and will across every kind of ground. He didn’t discriminate. Didn’t calculate. Didn’t withhold.
Other farmers watched from the edge of the field, appalled. “He’s wasting it,” they muttered. “Throwing away good seed on ground that will never yield.”
But the Sower kept walking, kept scattering, kept trusting the ground to reveal what kind of ground it was.
Some fell on the path where feet had packed the earth to stone.
The seed lay there exposed, unable to penetrate the hardness beneath. It hadn’t been rejected. The ground simply couldn’t receive it. Years of traffic had created a surface that nothing could break through.
The birds came within hours. To them, it was easy food, there for the taking. Gone before sunset. Gone before it could even attempt to grow.
Consciousness hardens through repetition. The same thoughts walking the same routes until the mind becomes impervious to new possibility. The seed of truth lands but cannot penetrate. It sits on the surface until the world’s distractions snatch it away.
You’ve been this ground. We all have. When something true arrives but we’re too packed down by old patterns to let it in.
Some fell on rocky ground with only a thin layer of soil.
This seed sprouted immediately, shooting up with the desperate enthusiasm of shallow roots. Green and eager, it looked like success. It looked like the fastest growth in the field.
But the rock beneath meant no depth was possible. No taproot could form. No reservoir could develop. When the sun rose in its full power, when the first real test came, the plant had nothing to draw from.
It withered in a day. All that early enthusiasm burned away by the first real heat.
The spiritual high that doesn’t survive Monday morning. The revelation that feels transformative until life tests it. The truth you celebrate but never integrate.
Shallow soil produces spectacular failure—the kind that makes you stop trusting seed altogether.
Some fell among thorns.
Here’s where it gets interesting. This seed didn’t just sprout—it actually grew. It put down real roots. It pushed up real stems. For a while, it looked like it would make it.
But the thorns were already there. Established. Entitled. They’d claimed this ground long before the good seed arrived.
They didn’t attack the wheat. They just grew faster. They reached higher. They spread wider. They took the sun, the rain, the nutrients. Not through malice but through prior claim.
The wheat fought for every inch of light, every drop of water. But fighting for survival takes all your energy. There’s nothing left for bearing fruit.
When harvest came, the thorns stood tall. The wheat was a whisper of what it could have been, choked not by evil but by competition. By the ten thousand other things that seemed important. By the comfortable thorns you couldn’t bear to uproot.
The life too crowded for transformation—a consciousness so full of other commitments that truth can’t find room to flourish. Not rejected but suffocated. Not denied but crowded out by everything else you’re cultivating.
But some fell on good soil.
Not perfect soil. That doesn’t exist. But soil that had been prepared. Broken open by seasons of drought and flood. Turned over by difficulty. Composted with failure and loss until it became rich, dark, receptive.
This soil knew how to receive.
The seed went deep. The roots found water that surface plants never taste. Found nutrients that shallow growth never reaches. Found the stability that rocky ground can’t provide and the space that thorny ground won’t allow.
The plant grew through spring’s promise and summer’s heat. Through storm and drought. Through all the seasons that destroy shallow growth and choke crowded growth.
And when harvest came, this seed yielded thirty, sixty, a hundred times what was sown.
One grain became a sheaf. One handful became enough to feed a village. What looked like waste to the careful farmers became abundance beyond calculation.
The Sower’s companions stood before overflowing barns.
The very men who’d criticized his waste now speechless at his harvest.
“How?” they asked. “We saw you throw seed on the path. We saw it die on rocks. We saw thorns choke it. How is there this much harvest from so much waste?”
The Sower looked at them with the patience of someone who understands what they’re still learning:
“The seed was never the variable. The seed was always good. Always capable. Always ready to multiply.
The only question was the soil.”
The careful farmers never understood.
The Sower wasn’t wasting seed. He was revealing soil.
Each type of ground had to receive the seed to show what kind of ground it was. The path couldn’t know it was hard until seed failed to penetrate. The rocky ground couldn’t reveal its shallowness until growth withered. The thorny ground couldn’t expose its crowdedness until competition began.
And the good soil—it couldn’t demonstrate its fertility until seed arrived to multiply within it.
The generous sowing wasn’t waste. It was diagnosis. It was revelation. It was the only way to discover which ground was ready.
God sows like this.
Truth scattered everywhere, not just where success seems likely. Grace thrown at hard hearts and shallow minds and crowded lives. Not because God is wasteful but because God refuses to prejudge the soil.
That person you’ve written off as path—too hardened to receive truth?
Seed falls there anyway.
That shallow, enthusiastic convert who’ll flame out by Thursday?
Seed falls there too.
That life so crowded with competing priorities that nothing sacred can flourish?
Yup. Even there.
Because sometimes the path gets broken by unexpected storm. Sometimes the rocks get removed by suffering that goes deeper than stone. Sometimes someone finally gets tired enough of thorns to start pulling them out by the roots.
And when that happens, the seed is already there.
Waiting.
The kingdom spreads despite every prediction of failure, truth survives every attempt to bury it, and grace keeps arriving for people who don’t deserve it.
This is the relentless logic of divine generosity.
The Sower never stopped sowing.
Even on you. Even on your hardest days when you were pure path. Even in your shallow seasons when you were all enthusiasm and no root. Even in your crowded years when thorns choked everything sacred.
The seed kept falling.
And somewhere in you, perhaps just now, some soil is softening. Some rock is moving. Some thorns are loosening their grip.
The question isn’t whether you’ve received seed.
The question is what kind of ground you’re becoming.
What kind of ground have you become?
<3EKO
I hope you have a peaceful, fruitful weekend and I’ll be back again next week with the next chapter in this series unsealing the parables of Jesus.
If you’d like to support this work directly, you can always buy me a coffee.
Thank you for being here.
I love you.








thank you for this perspective, eko. i always looked at this parable from the seed’s perspective. i had never flipped it to think of it from the ground/soil pov. o7
Your unique way of putting truth into beautiful words touches me every time.
I have tears in my eyes, grateful tears.