Tonnau Duw ('God's waves') Fr Tim Ardouin

Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path…Other seeds fell on rocky ground…Other seeds fell among thorns…Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain…Let anyone with ears listen!

(Matthew 13.1-9)

The sower sows but the seed fails. He sows again. Failure. And again. Uh oh. Fail. Yet again the sower throws the seed and grace happens.

“God’s grace has a drenching about it”, writes Max Lucado in his book Grace: More Than We Deserve, Greater Than We Imagine. The ground in Jesus’ parable of the sower is drenched in seed. Similarly, God’s Word is sown in us again and again, in abundance, until “does not understand” (Matt 13.19), “has no root” (vs 21), “the cares of the world and the lure of wealth” (vs 22) cease to snatch, fade or choke us but instead give way to the fruit of heaven (vs 23).

God drenches us until the seed finds the fertile places in us.

Sometimes it falls on the parts of our souls which are hardened by who we think we have to be to survive – the parts which we have walled off against pain or emotional turmoil, a sense of rejection or alienation, of being stood up or let down. Oh our defences go deep don’t they? Fear is the snatcher of hope, bitterness her suffocating shroud. But love’s drenching does not give up.

Sometimes we are slain by truth – a word, a phrase from the lips of the prophets, the teachings or deeds of the Christ. And we rejoice. But then we blur it and merge it with the precepts of our minds, ignoring the root of Apostolic inheritance, drifting

in fantastic seas

of  elusive

philosophic

propitiation.

We don’t deserve it but the sower of peace keeps on sowing.

And then there are the thorns. The seduction of self-worth intoxicates. The demands of conformity, efficiency, punctuality, relevance, the seen-to-be-busy-ness of our programmed and our programming existence. Still the seed from the hand of God comes.

Still. Be still.

It comes.

And it falls in the spaces and in the cracks where our souls still breathe.

In the spaces and in the cracks, the seed of God’s love is watered. By grace, it is drenched in the “living water” from a Samaritan well-side and from “the river of the water of life.” The seed is tended by God’s Blessed Son in the hearts of our true selves until we are shaken to our senses by grace.

So it is that God sends us. As he sends Christ, in Christ, he sends each one of us. Into the world we are called, to sow and to never give up. We are to drench the soul of our communities with love.

God puts the seed in our hand. God gives us the power to disperse it. God will cause it to grow.

Be faithful.

Be patient.

Forgive.

Love.

Sow.

~ by Fr Tim Ardouin on July 10, 2014.

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