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The Parable of the Sower (Luke 8:4-15)

The parable of the sower may be the most recognizable, the most familiar one of all the parables in the New Testament.  You can precisely follow every step of the sower, the way of the seed to death and to life.  In crystal clear words, Christ lets his disciples and us hear who are meant in this parable.  Everything comes to light.

But still, after I had thought for years that I had understood it all, only now do I realize where the good earth comes from.  How do I prepare the ground of my inner life, so that I can receive His word and let it bear fruit?  Actually, every person knows what needs to happen with the ground so that the seed will fall into good soil.

Dag Hammarskjőld described this soil in his diary with the words: “Remain open, still, moist humus, in fertile darkness, into which rain falls and grain ripens—regardless of how many there may be who walk across the fields in dry daylight, trampling everything to dust.”

But Dag Hammarskjőld does not describe what first has to happen.  First of all, the ground has to be plowed, turned, broken open, in order to take in the seed like a womb.  Without the ploughshare it can’t be done.

And that is how it also goes in the ground of our soul.  Only when it is ploughed does the soul become receptive.  The plough—that is destiny, fate, pain, illness, death.

But isn’t it the same worker who puts his hand to the plough and sows the seed?

Isn’t He, who sows new life in death, the same as the one who breaks us open?

Thus will it always be

The age-old custom:

Ploughing and sowing.

Never likely to expire.

How else will seed sprout

Than in ploughed soil

That like a mother

In pains

Has to bear children?

And we?

Thus will it always be:

Broken by destiny,

Like a black field,

To preserve new life

By the ploughshare

Of the pain.

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, February 15, 2026.

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“Speak just one word, then my servant will be healed.” (Matthew 8:8)

The art of having a long illness and of slowly healing is one of the most difficult challenges in life.  Especially the first, having a long illness, is one of the arts of life.  For you have to become “patient.”  That word means having patience, not only with the illness, but also with yourself.  Every form of unrest and impatience disturbs the healing process.

You have to be ill and full of trust in such a way that the healer can do his work.  Sometimes that is the physician who has the right means and insight into character.  Sometimes it is also, or especially, the self-healing capacity of the patient.

But in all cases it is the Savior who ultimately heals.  That is why He says: “… for apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) If there is anything that being ill and healing patiently bring about, it is trust in the visible and invisible helpers on the way to recovery.  For just as puzzling and unpredictable as the cause and the process of an illness can be, is the healing that takes place sooner or later—even if it is through death, which ultimately makes us healthy.  That is why the first Christians called the death day dies natalis, which means birthday.  To the spiritual world we are born when we die.

As no other, the Roman officer has unconditional confidence in the healer for the recovery of his servant: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter my house.  Speak just one word, then my servant will be healed.”  In religious terms, that is called faith.

Christ, the Savior, wants to heal us—even from the illness all of us are afflicted with all our life: the sickness of sin.  In illness, weakness, exhaustion, and in death He wants to bear the burden together with us, if we entrust ourselves to Him.  “For he has taken up our ailments and has born our diseases.”

 

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, February 1, 2026

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