From Fr. Kiffmeyer

Updated:  Sunday, July 13, 2008

The story is told of Franklin Roosevelt, who often endured long receiving lines at the White House. He complained that no one really paid any attention to what was said. One day, during a reception, he decided to try an experiment. To each person who passed down the line and shook hands, he murmured, "I murdered my grandmother this morning." The guests responded with phrases like, "Marvelous! Keep up the good work. We are proud of you. God bless you, sir." It was not until the end of the line, while greeting the ambassador from Bolivia, that his words were actually heard. Un-phased, the ambassador leaned over and whispered, "I’m sure she had it coming."

Do you ever wonder if anyone is really listening?  Well, this story does point out a serious human flaw and that is, to our own detriment, we can be selective in our hearing.  You see, the question is not so much about what is being said, but about our listening.  Are we listening?

Jesus wanted to get people’s attention because he had important matters to speak about.  So to get their attention, He used parables.  Simply, they were stories.  And He used them to make the truth clearer to those that were really seeking the truth.  But to those that were not seeking the truth, the stories had a way of making things more obscure.

Today, we consider a very popular parable entitled “The Parable of the Sower.”  This familiar story makes the following clear: the seed represents God’s message of good news and the soil represents our varying responses to the good news.  God speaks to us because it is His nature to do so.  He desires to reveal Himself to us.  And even though what God has to say to us is so large and our minds are so small, He keeps speaking.

God graciously speaks to you today.  I want to encourage you to listen.  If your heart is hard-packed and beaten down allow God’s Spirit to break up your ground and make it receptive to His Word.  If the soil of your heart is shallow, call upon the Spirit to remove the rocky resistance that lies beneath the surface of the seeming acceptance.  And if your heart is infested with the weedy cares and concerns of the world, ask the Spirit to cleanse you of worldliness and receive Him with no reservation or competing loyalties.  Realize that God is still speaking and has not given up on you today.  You are not a waste of time to Him.  You are God’s good soil in which He is able to produce “a hundred or sixty or thirty fold.”    I pray that you find God’s comforting presence and his encouraging voice echo within you in the coming week.  Fr. Jim