Author: Jim Naughton

Once upon a time a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came along and devoured them. So he put his seed pouch down and spent the next hour or so stringing aluminum foil all around his field. He put up a fake owl he ordered from a garden catalog and, as an afterthought, he hung a couple of traps for the Japanese beetles.

I remember seeing this parable [of the sower] acted out in the stage production of “Godspell,” a good-humored play based on the gospel according to Matthew. . . . Watching all of that, I had the same response I always do to this parable: I started worrying about what kind of ground I was on with God.

We are frequently told that we live in an age that doubts the wisdom, perhaps even the possibility, of commitment. At the same time, we can see a profound yearning for the values of community in the society of our times: the stability and sense of identity, the rootedness, that is so often lacking for those who live in the modern city.