A sower went forth to sow, but he never quite managed to sow the seed in his sack. You see, his brother was sowing seed in the same field.
While our sower very carefully planted his seed one at a time, his brother was broadcasting his seed with no regard for how or where they fell. That would never do! He was expending too much seed and subjecting the new plants to too much danger from birds, animals, and weeds. So our sower felt it necessary to make sure that his brother planted his seeds properly.
Once the brother's seed sack was empty, our sower noticed a neighbor entering the field with a sack of seed. What if he began planting them wrong too! He went to instruct the neighbor and noticed that some of his seed seemed suspiciously unsound. He began sorting the seed and lecturing the neighbor about planting bad seed that would never sprout. The neighbor became angry, but sowed all his seed anyway.
Then a man with a big modern tractor entered the field. This fellow must know what he was doing because he had very expensive equiptment. Our sower stood back and watched as the man planted most of the field. Finally, the man ran out of gas and began asking for help to buy fuel. Our sower donated generously but never opened his seed sack to sow because this guy was obviously doing a better job.
There was still a large section of the field to plant, but the sun was setting and the sky was threatening rain. Our sower decided his seed could wait till tomorrow, but it rained the next day and the day after. The ground was never quite dry enough and there were other things to which our sower must attend. His seed stayed in the sack which he threw in the corner of his shed. “There will be big enough crop without them,” he thought.
After a while the planted seed began to sprout. Our sower was amazed when he looked at the place his brother had first broadcast seed because it seemed to have just as many or more healthy plants than the area in which he had insisted on a very careful one at a time method with painfully precise measuring of depth and careful covering.
Even the neighbor's seed had produced many good plants because not all of the seed had been bad.
The expensive tractor had left many skips in the rows it had planted because the machinery could not tell which areas would support many seed and which areas were only fertile enough to support a few plants.
Meanwhile, the weeds had grown and multiplied in the area our sower failed to plant. They had grown rapidly and spread in to the field even where it had been well planted by others. This would never do!
The sower grabbed his hoe and began digging weeds from among the plants. In his zeal he uprooted many of the plants that others had sown. He cut down some plants by mistake, but he figured it wouldn't matter. By the time evening arrived again, he was sure that the crop would be better for his efforts. Most of the weeds were gone and at least half of the good plants remained. He was almost certain that you had to sacrifice some good to get rid of the bad.
When the harvest finally arrived, many of the remaining plants had died. His vigorous tilling had loosened the dirt too much and the roots had never again been able to get a good grasp in the soil. The yeild was pitiful and disappointing to those who had worked so hard, but our sower was sure he had done his best and would do the same again next year.
Copyright Wes Dawson 2003
