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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
April 8, 2007
Published as Family History
in a Gramma Letter dated March 19, 1996.
© 1996 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Tulip & Glass, 2005
© 2005 by Bud Grossmann
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SEEDS ON STONY SOIL
Tuesday, March 19, 1996
Dear Gramma,
This past week, our family faced a small theological crisis. We had understood from the words of Jesus that something would happen a certain way, but then it didn’t.
Our eight-year-old, Elizabeth, had brought two Dixie cups home from Sunday School. One was half-full with rocks—small chunks of lava and coral. The other cup contained rich planting soil.
Liz told us she had put seeds in each cup—her teacher had told the Parable of the Sower, from the fourth chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel. The Dixie-cup planters were to help students remember the farming images Jesus had employed to teach about the growth of the word of God. We poked drain holes in both cups and set them on saucers near our kitchen window.
On Wednesday evening, while I was washing the supper dishes, I reached over to sprinkle a handful of water into Liz’s little gardens. A surprise awaited me: in the cup with good soil, nothing seemed to have changed, but in the other, coming forth from the rocks, a sprout was appearing. The seed, about the size of a thumbnail, was rising to open like a tiny mouth. A little lick of leafy tongue was showing.
That didn’t seem right. It didn’t fit how I remembered the parable. But I looked up the story in Mark and found that, sure enough, Jesus had said, “some seed fell on stony ground...and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.” Jesus said the seed that fell on good ground would take a little longer to germinate, but then it would flourish and bring forth abundant fruit.
So, then. Our first sprout was on schedule. But Liz’s crops soon departed from the biblical plan. The plant in the cup of stones grew so fast I could practically watch it rise heavenward. It was thriving—not withering—in the soft sunlight entering our kitchen.
By Saturday evening I began to fear our daughter had planted Jack’s Beanstalk in her little planter of pebbles. The other cup had lovely looking soil, but it still showed no sign of life. I decided I better speak with Eliz’s teacher, Betsy Baile.
I phoned Betsy and explained what was happening in the gardens she had given us. I asked worriedly, “What can we tell Elizabeth?”
Betsy did not hesitate in her reply. “You may tell her,” the teacher declared confidently, “that God performs miracles.”
So! God performs miracles. Yes, that truth is a good one to give my children. I have taught them, also, that God doesn’t always choose to deliver exactly the miracles we demand of him. But yes, indeed, God does perform miracles every single day. Even from rocky places and from hearts that seem stony, he can bring forth bountiful blossoms and a fullness of fruit.
If you will excuse me now, Gramma, I have to go look for my chain saw—there is work to be done in the kitchen.
Love,
Buddy
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