The seed is the Word (Mark 4:14). The gospel of the Kingdom. The living and abiding Word of God. We are blessed with opportunities to take that Word into our hearts. That blessing comes with a responsibility, to hear God's Word with "noble and good hearts" (Luke 8:15). That is, with integrity, with humility, with a willingness to hear all that it says to us. To come with open hearts and minds. Which means we need to become careful readers and listeners - engaged, thoughtful, responsive. Not passive, as though our minds were simply a sluice-gate into the soul.
But there is a difference between the kind of active listening we're called to and an over-mechanised view of how the Word works in our or other people's lives. The Word needs to, and will, do its work, even though we (like the man in the parable) do not know how. And that work is always more extensive and more unexpected than we are likely prepared for.
We're to come with a readiness, a willingness, to be humbled, to be challenged, to be encouraged, exhorted, equipped. But those outcomes, in all the reality of their fruitful detail, are the work of the Spirit himself. They are not determined by our own expectations ("I'm going to read this passage so that I can be convicted about that sin ...".) Conviction and comfort are the work of the Counsellor given to us by our Lord Jesus. They are not self-generated.
We simply do not know enough about how he does his work. The motions of a soul are mysteries to us and the intricacies of the mind and the impact upon it of history and life's experiences are far beyond our ability to know or to program. "The Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom" - not only for those liberated into adoption as the children of God but the freedom of the Spirit himself in the loving work of recreation. The wind blows where and as it wills. We know so little of the detail.
As much as that is true for ourselves in our listening to God's Word, it is also true in the scattering of the seed of the Word into other lives that are as yet fruitless, void of the saving grace of Jesus. We cannot contrive the outcome; we cannot properly conceive of what the Lord in his sovereign goodness is already working at. The life is in the seed, not the mind of the sower.
That demands humility of us. The seed is out of our sight but not out of the mind of God. The work is not ours but his. We may have the privilege of being co-workers, but it is only and ever the Lord who gives the increase, who makes the seed bring forth new life.
The humility this calls for can then merge into restfulness. "Whether he sleeps or gets up" the work continues, under the ground, buried deep in the human heart. No amount of staying awake, prodding the ground, watching with anxious hearts for the first signs of life, will hasten the harvest.
That restfulness is not sinful, it isn't laziness. It honours the Lord of the Harvest, the Living Word, the life-giving Spirit.
************
I know not why God’s wondrous grace
To me hath been made known;
Nor why, unworthy as I am,
He claimed me for His own.
I know not how this saving faith
To me He did impart;
Or how believing in His word
Wrought peace within my heart.
I know not how the Spirit moves,
Convincing men of sin;
Revealing Jesus through the Word,
Creating faith in Him.
I know not what of good or ill
May be reserved for me,
Of weary ways or golden days
Before His face I see.
I know not when my Lord may come;
I know not how, nor where;
If I shall pass the vale of death,
Or meet Him in the air.
But I know Whom I have believed,
And am persuaded that He is able
To keep that which I've committed
Unto Him, against that day.
(Daniel Webster Whittle, 1840-1901)
