The Hopeful Farmer

Gospel: Luke 8: 4-15

God is one with endless hope, and today's Gospel highlights that fact.  In the parable of the sower, the farmer (God) spreads seed on all sorts of terrain, even on areas where there is no possibility at all of producing any fruit.  Why does the farmer do this?  It is not a story about a farmer, but one about God, a God who is ever hopeful and who gives the same love and grace to all people of all places.  

What is more, we are not inanimate soil, but we are dynamic human beings capable of change, growth, and transformation.  And it is the seed that God provides us - God's grace and love - that is capable of realizing such transformation within us.  God promised our stony hearts would be changed to natural hearts, and so this seed that God sows can change the rocky soil to rich, productive soil as well.  

And so if God has this generous hope in providing grace and love to all, we must live in the hope that the seed God provides will accomplish its intended goal and produce abundant fruit within us.  These hopeful aspirations lead to hopeful deeds - a hope that our deeds of love and mercy have good effect in a world that often seems hopeless to so many.  That is how God's seed multiplies and bears fruit: God lives in hope and this hope takes root within us bearing deeds of hope in our world.