Some a Hundredfold

In the parable of the sower and the seed (Mt 13, Mk 4, Lk 8) Jesus concludes the story by saying that the seed that fell on the good soil yielded fruit: some 100-fold, some 60, and some 30.

Christians want to be in the hundredfold group.

Sometimes Christians even look down on the Christians who are only in the thirty-fold group.





Dirt can't make itself into better dirt. Dirt can't get rid of weed seeds. Dirt can't get rid of its own stoniness. Neither can people make themselves into "good soil" instead of rocky soil or a paved road or a plot of weeds/thistles. Christians believe that, right? We believe that we are dead in our sins, that we have no power to come to God on our own, that He is the one who makes us alive.

And yet, somehow, we get the impression that we can make ourselves into the kind of soil that yields 100-fold instead of 30-fold. I don't know about your gardening experiences, but the way things have worked in my backyard, it is the gardener (not the ground) that adds manure, removes rocks, pulls weeds, waters, and does whatever-gets-done to improve the soil and/or to improve the seeds' yield.