Our domestic helper on persuasion from Anna planted seeds of string beans in the fertile ground near our well two months ago. Now the whole stretch is occupied with the plants that bear fruits. The seeds sprouted with such vigour and foliage that we knew that we were in for a surprise with a good yield of beans. Now three months later, we gather enough beans each day for us and on some days to distribute to others.
Jesus of Nazareth told a parable about seed and its unknown growth which appears in the gospel of Mark of the New Testament of the Bible, in chapter 4, verses 26 to 29. Jesus spoke this parable to illustrate the truth about the kingdom of God and one of its special natures.
' ... a man casts seed upon the soil and goes to bed at night and gets up by day and the seed sprouts up and grows- how, he himself does not know. The soil produces crops by itself...' (v26-28).
As I watched how the soil produces crop by itself by seeing the bean seeds sprout and cover the field of about fifteen meters in length and five meters broad, I stay amazed at the profoundness of this parable.
The consumer conscious society advocates labouring to receive the fruits of one's labour. So the labouring is the way of life that one of the founders of the software company, Infosys, exhorted professionals to work for 12 hours or more in a day to improve output and subsequent increase in profit.
The contrast is striking. The labour market exhorts for more work. But this parable speaks about the soil producing crop by itself!
There is a dimension in one's life that is beyond the existential and temporal. The eternal dimension in each of our lives is well illustrated by the Psalmist when he said, in Psalm 139, verse 13-14: ' Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother's womb, I will give thanks to Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made..' .
The God of creation is at work in our creation and formation as well as in nature to bring fruit out of soil!
I feel inspired by the message God gave to Adam in the garden of Eden: ' Behold I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth and eery tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you..'(Genesis 1:29-30). The narration of God's gift of produce of food from the earth to humankind is referred to in Genesis 2: 9, 'And out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food...'. God sent Adam out of the garden 'to cultivate the ground from which he was taken' (Genesis 3:23).
This is the whole truth. We have been given, and we have been called to work! We have been promised the yield! Often the yield is disproportionate to our efforts or abilities because what we receive is beyond the normal outcome of our labour!
I get a sense of the mood of St Paul about this aspect of how the seed grows without or in spite of one's own effort: 'I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So neither one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth' (I corinthians 3:6-7).
How comforting it is to experience this chain process where we receive from each other and offer to each other for a common purpose of ushering in the growth for everyone to receive the fruits.
As we relish the beans at each meal time, we are reminded of receiving for which we did not labour except sowing the seed. It occurrs to me as a symbol of most experiences in life. We receive what we did not labour for or more than what we laboured for!
It brings us to live lot more gratefully towards those who obviously or silently or unknown to us share their goodness with us because of which we feel blessed and filled! That is God's way of providing what we need, which we could not find for ourself!
This takes the attention away from an acquisitive orientation that dominates human frame of thinking. The stressful and anxious striving to be successful is a distorted way of living; instead the way of living is by being steward of what we have been given. The 'seed' or our resources, when we let go into the receiving soil, they multiply for a plentiful harvest, the benefit of which reaches beyond ourselves.
A seven year old boy told me, 'Uncle when I come to the bed at night, my bed was made ready for me to sleep. I do not remember making my bed when I got up in the morning' !
To know that others do much more than I notice to make my life easy to live, is an awareness that I need each day!
The soil feeds the seed to grow. That is an existential view of life.
A more gracious view of life is that it is 'in God we live, move and have our being' and He is the giver of all good gifts!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
No comments:
Post a Comment