A little boy raised his hand and waved at me from his comfy reclined position in the double stroller. He greeted me with a very loud “Hi!” and I returned his “Hi” and waved back. His little sister waved and I greeted her too. As their mom pushed the stroller past me I heard three precious words, “I love her!”, uttered with a tone of joy mixed with awe. An older man passed me on the same trail. His hands behind his back, bent forward, walking slow. I received a head nod and an out-of-breath “Hi.”
The same greeting. Completely different soil.
Somewhere along our journey between the stroller and wherever that man had been, life starts life-ing. We learn the weight of what we let in. The cost of openness, the risk of enthusiasm.
It’s The Soil
In Luke 8:4-15, Jesus tells a story about a farmer scattering seed. The crowd heard a farming story. The disciples heard something more. Jesus explains: the difference between the four outcomes isn’t the seed. It’s the soil.
That little boy in the stroller didn’t weigh the cost of saying, “I love her!” He didn’t calculate whether I was worth his enthusiasm. His heart was all wide-open soil.
The question Jesus is asking, the question He’s always asking, is what kind of soil are we?
Not just at the moment of first belief. But over time, through the thorns of life, through the droughts: am I holding on? Am I still yielding?
How Then Should We Pray?
“…but deliver us from evil.” Matt 6:13 ESV
Here is the truth: we cannot keep our own soil healthy. We are not strong enough to fight off every distraction, outlast every disappointment, or outwork every hardness that life presses into us. This is why Jesus taught his disciples to pray as an act of surrender, and a purposeful return to the One who tends the ground.
Deliver us from evil. Not only from the dramatic and obvious warfare, but from the slow and subtle: the non-stop busyness, the unbelievable hurt, the daily grind that gradually makes us less able to receive. Prayer is an act of leaning in to seek understanding. It is how we confess that the softness of our soil is not something we can ever manufacture, it is something we must ask for.
Good soil perseveres. It doesn’t just receive the Word once and move on, good soil holds it, protects it, keeps breaking open around it.
And perhaps the first step toward becoming good soil is simply doing what the disciples did: leaning in, asking questions, refusing to stay on the surface of things.
Praying “Deliver us from evil” is the soul saying: Lord, don’t let anything take root in me that would crowd out You.
*For those of you who prayer walk, take time to ponder and pray ‘deliver us from evil’. For your copy of this week’s screensaver click here. And to access all of my YouVersion Bible App devotional plans click here.