Bible
Study: Jeremiah 1, 1 to 10 and Matthew 13, 1 to 9.
Once
again, we come across a very popular parable in the Scriptures. The parable of
the sower. Although, Jesus explained this parable himself, scripture scholars
or even ordinary theology graduates like me are never tired of pouring out new
interpretations all in a bid to make sense from this parable and apply its
lessons to our personal lives. So please do not mind, if I proffer a new
interpretation today.
Have you
ever experienced a situation like this before; you read a page in a particular
book and nothing seems to make sense to you only for you to pick up that same
book again at some other time, read that same page and you almost start
wondering whether the page re-wrote itself?
The story
is told of a professor who was explaining something to a young man and as they
talked, they drank tea. Then, the professor started pouring tea into the young
man’s cup and he kept pouring even when the cup was full. The young man
shouted, “why are you still pouring more tea, can’t you see, the cup is full
already?” The professor simply explained that that was exactly his state of
mind. When the mind is full of its own ideas, it cannot learn anything new. The
young man got the point!
Dear
friends, the mind is to a Christian what the soil is to a seed. When Jesus gave
the parable of the sower, his real point of emphasis was not the carelessness
of the sower who went about spraying seed anyhow. His emphasis was that there
are different kinds of soils, there are different kinds of minds into which the
word of God is sown. Even within me, my state of mind can change anytime. I may
have a mind of good soil this morning since I am just waking up but perhaps
maybe in the evening, I may graduate into a mind of thorns, worried about many
things. This is why it is possible to read a book twice and it only makes sense
to you at the second reading; it is not the printed words in the book that
changed, it is your state of mind that changed.
So, if I
want to change my life, all I need to do is to examine my mind and change it.
What type of mind do I have? Do I have the mind of a youth like Jeremiah in
today’s first reading? The mind of a youth symbolizes the mind of a person who
does not believe in himself, a person with very low self-esteem who constantly
looks down on himself. I may be a hundred years old, but so long as I have this
kind of mind, I may not be able to achieve anything in life.
When God
called Jeremiah, he had to change his mind first. God changed his mind by
telling him that even before he was born, his name was known already. This
beefed up Jeremiah’s self-esteem, he stopped seeing himself as an accident, a
product of chance as some people believe they are. Jeremiah now had the mind
that everything that had happened to him were divinely ordered. God again
changed his mind by touching his mouth. This gave Jeremiah a mind of confidence
to speak truth without fear.
What
exactly is the content of my mind? What do I think I am? What do I honestly
think I can achieve in life and what do I consider as are my limits? As
children, we all had minds of good soils. We could dream, we often imagined or
daydreamed of becoming this and that someday. We had faith in ourselves that we
could achieve so much in life. We could dream freely because our minds were
clean, our soils were not yet corrupt. As we grew older, we started bringing in
impurities into our minds; impurities such as fear, worry, competition,
bitterness and so on. We soon replaced faith with science. We no longer
believed Santa Claus was real and because we discovered Daddy told a lie, we
stopped believed everything we thought we knew. We now wanted to see first
before we believe.
Our good
soils became rocky, thorny and sandy. We stopped applying the manure of God’s
words and daily prayers to our soil. We started pursuing money so viciously and
violently that it became a god to our souls. Now the seeds of faith that were
planted in us those days when we read “My book of Bible Stories”, the seeds of
faith that penetrated easily when we studied: “Who made you, God made me…” have
failed to yield the right results. Our lives are full of atrocities and
unspeakable things. We have allowed the birds of the air steal those seeds
away. We have allowed thorns of earthly material worries choke the seeds that
wanted to grow. We have placed the hard rock of “seeing is believing” into our
hearts.
It is not
too late. It is not too late. I can still do something today. I can still
change my mind, I can still change the way I receive God’s words on a daily
basis. Yes, I can still change the way I allow the seeds grow within me. I can
still chose to become like the little child I used to be when I really had a
burning desire to become a Saint.
Let us Pray:
Lord God, to call Jeremiah,
you changed his mind-set. Help me to change my mind today so that I can change
my life and begin to bear the right fruits. Amen
Good
morning. Be Happy. Live Positive. Have Faith. It is well with you. God bless
you.
Fr. Abu.
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