April 8, 2025; Mark 4:1-34

Daily Dose of Hope

April 8, 2025

Day 2 of Week 2

 

Scripture - Mark 4:1-34

 

Prayer:  Father God, hear our prayer this morning.  We are awed by your power and strength.  We are amazed by your love.  Thank you, Lord, for the many ways you show in our lives to teach us and care for us.  Help us gather our scattered thoughts right now and focus on you.  In these next few moments of silence, help us (help me) be still and know that you are God...Come Holy Spirit, and help us walk through this Scripture in a way that honors you.  Show up and help us discover whatever it is you want us to learn.  This is your Word and we want to hear from you.  In Your powerful name, Amen.

 

Welcome to the Daily Dose of Hope, Deep Dive into the Gospels and Acts. Today, we will be starting Mark 4 and unpacking some pretty powerful parables and three of four are about seeds.  Why seeds?  I’m guessing it’s because seeds are something an agrarian society would understand.  But we also soon learn that the Kingdom is similar to a simple seed, seemingly small and fragile but growing into a lush plant that is massive and strong, itself producing more and more seeds.

 

Most of Jesus’ big teachings were given in parables. If you think about a parable, Jesus is taking something pretty ordinary, like a seed, and using it to make a statement about divine activity.  All of these parables were used to give a glimpse of God’s Kingdom.  In each parable, Jesus describes a different aspect of the Kingdom.  No one parable can capture what it looks like to live under the reign of God, but together, we get a pretty good picture. 

 

The first parable we read today was the parable of the Sower.  Jesus says that a farmer goes out to sow seeds.  But the farmer doesn’t worry so much about where he is throwing the seeds. He actually seems to be pretty indiscriminate with his seed-throwing.  He is literally just throwing seed everywhere.  Some of the seed falls right on the path, where all the people walked and the soil was hard and had been packed down.  The birds ate most of that seed.  Some of the seed fell in rocky places (there are lots of rocky places in that part of the world) and while it would sprout, the soil was shallow, and there wasn’t enough root for the plant to survive.  Some fell among thorns, and the thorns were invasive and took over. The plants had no real chance of survival there.  But then some seeds fell on good soil, which produced an amazing crop – many, many times what was sown (30, 60, or even 100 times). 

 

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