Tidy Sidewalks

“And it happened, as he sowed, that some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds of the air came and devoured it. . . . And these are the ones by the wayside where the word is sown. When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown in their hearts.” (Mark 4:4, 15)

Birds eat seed. I have three birdfeeders in my backyard, and the birds keep me busy filling them up with sunflower seeds. This is great, of course, if you are trying to attract birds, but it is a whole ’nother story if you are trying to grow sunflowers. Put out bean “seed” in the garden and wait and watch. Before long, here comes rockin’ robin to see what you left him. Plant enough for the birds.

Just as surely as the birds are going to eat some of your seed, the devil’s purpose in life is to take away the Word of God out of your heart. That has been his line from the very beginning. When God had given His word to Adam and Eve, Satan came along and twisted it and questioned it and tried to rub it out altogether.

So guard your heart. The first step is to plant the Word of God there. But if it is not guarded and cherished through faith and obedience, Satan will come waltzing in through an open door, robbing you of its benefit, strewing doubt and lies and temptations in its stead.

Sometimes we allow the Word of God to lie bare upon our soul like so much seed on the sidewalk. To use another metaphor, it is like we walk up the front steps of the Word, take a look around, pick up an item or two and turn it over curiously like we would a museum piece, place it back neatly on its little table or stand, and walk back out again. If we are not using the cutting board and knife, eating the food out of the refrigerator, sleeping in the bed, taking clothes off the hanger, etc., we are not living in the Word of God, from the Word of God, through the Word of God, by the Word of God.

To return to Christ’s picture, the Word of God must penetrate into the hard clay soil of our hearts (which needs softening up by the Spirit of God) and take root there, bearing fruit, else our hearts begin to run the risk of having it taken away altogether. This may sound ominous, but, sadly, there are too many once-orthodox-but-now-agnostic-or-atheist “believers” to be counted, whose lives each tell the same story. They heard the Word, but through disobedience their hearts were hardened to its life-changing message, and they have had less and less use for it until it is gone from their lives altogether. They have tidy sidewalks, thanks to the birds, who are all too happy to gobble up all that unused seed lying about and making such a mess of things. But the birds leave their own mess, of course, and in the end there is no true life where the voice of God has disappeared.

“God, we pray for better things in our own hearts. Break up the fallow ground, these stony hearts of clay, and cause Your Word to take root and bear fruit in our lives. Guard us from the evil one, dear God, who would rob us of Your Word and the life it brings through Christ our Lord. Move our hearts to respond to Your Word always in faith and obedience, and revive us, O God, according to Your Word, we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.”