Mom told me another story this week from the Bible. This one was about DIRT!
You see, my mom knows I love to dig in the dirt, and I especially like it when I find things that smell good. Sometimes I find stuff like flower bulbs; Mom takes them away from me and puts them back down in the dirt. Sometimes Mom says the stuff I find smells bad and she won’t let me play with it or eat it.
But this story about the dirt… well, Mom says Jesus liked to teach his friends by telling them parables, which means “teaching stories”. One of the stories he told was about a farmer who sowed some seed.
Some of the seeds fell on the path, and when the birds saw them, they came down and ate them. Some of the seeds fell on ground that had lots of rocks in it; when the seeds sprouted, they didn’t have room for their roots to grow; when the sun came out it made them die because they couldn’t get to any water. Some of the seeds fell in the thorns; since the thorns were already grown they blocked the sun from those seeds and drank up all the water before the seeds could get to it, and the thorns just wrapped themselves around the new plants and they couldn’t survive. (mean old thorns!)
But some of the seeds fell onto good dirt; as the rains came, they drank it up; they pushed their roots down into the good dirt and held on when the wind blew; and when the sun came out shining hot on them, they drank up water that was deep underground. They were able to grow up to be big plants that produced lots of grain.
Mom says that the seeds in the story stand for God’s word. Sometimes people hear His word, but they don’t really pay attention or try to hold on to it. Then satan comes along and takes it away from them by getting their minds on other things. Sometimes a person hears the word, and they get excited when they realize it’s for them. But they don’t put their roots down into God’s word and hold on when things get tough; maybe their feelings get hurt by someone and they decide they don’t want to go to church or be around Christians anymore.
Sometimes a person hears God’s word, but they start worrying about stuff, instead of trusting God to take care of everything. They worry so much that they choke out what they’ve learned about God; then they decide that God can’t be trusted and they give up on Him.
But some seed falls in the good dirt; that’s the folks who pay attention to what the Bible says, and trust God to take care of them. They keep studying and learning about God, even when things get tough. They don’t give up, because they remember that God doesn’t give up on them.
And those are the seeds that grow up to bear lots of fruit… that means they teach others about Jesus too, and bring more folks into God’s Kingdom.
I want to bear lots of good fruit for Jesus; I love Him and I know He loves me!
Here’s a color sheet about this story, if you like to color. (Mom won’t let me color because I try to eat the crayons.)
