“Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it” (Mark 4:7).
This week new seminarians, our future pastors and deaconesses, are being oriented to study and life at Concordia Seminary. Yesterday they got their heads filled with information. Today they get onto busses to go pull weeds. That’s part of the orientation ritual. Every year new students along with faculty and staff go into the city of St. Louis to clean up community gardens.
Jesus said, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? The sower sows the word. …Others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful” (Mark 4:13-14, 18-19).
You understand this part of the parable, don’t you? The circumstances of your life can choke out your consciousness of living before God. Let circumstances be your lord and you will be unproductive for God’s purposes. “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink or what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (Matthew 6:25).
Our aspiring pastors and deaconesses want to be productive for God. Ultimately that depends upon intimacy with The Sower. “Privately to his own disciples he explained everything” (Mark 4:34).