Good soil: “But some seeds fell on fertile soil and produced a crop that was
thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted.” (Matthew
13:8) Now the story comes to the secret of a
fruitful and fulfilling life. Fertile soil. And what does fertile soil look
like? In the context of this story, it would certainly be soil that was
adequately cultivated, as opposed to the smooth footpath. It would not have
rocks under the surface, thus being cultivated and deep. And it would be free
of weeds.
What would this look like in human life? What
does it take to be a deep person, a person with enough stability to not only
weather the storms of life but also be fruitful? How does one cultivate the
soil of the heart and mind to build fertile depth conducive to growth and
wholeness and meaningful fulfillment?
Gordon MacDonald, in a book about “weathering
the storms of life that threaten the soul,” suggests that one of the
significant ways we can cultivate the soil of our hearts and minds to create
fertile depth is by regular self-reflection. We need to carve out specific time
in our busy schedules to do this. We need to find ways to quiet the many
shouting voices vying for our urgent attention, and be still long enough to
hear the significant voice of conscience, character, spiritual longings, and
God Himself.
We can do this, MacDonald suggests, by asking
ourselves some serious questions, “personal, below-the-water-line” questions
that tap into the soul’s archives. Here are a few: (1) Who am I really trying
to please? (2) What needs am I trying to meet? What insecurities am I
pampering? And what feelings am I storing up? (3) With whom/what am I competing?
(4) What rewards am I seeking? (5) What guilt or shame might I be covering?
It’s amazing how questions like these can lead
to deep reflection. They attempt to deal with motivation; what is it that
drives us to do what we do? What are the foundations upon which we’re building
our lives? If we’re honest with ourselves in answering these questions, we are
forced to realize that often we act from completely selfish and self-centered
needs. We’re actually looking for our needs to be met in the wrong places,
places that offer things in the end don’t really satisfy our real needs.
A Gary Larson cartoon shows three frogs sitting
in the middle of a dry, desolate desert amidst cactus, a scorpion, and a crack
in the parched earth. Two of them have shovels over their shoulders. The third
is pointing his shovel down to the ground and says, “We’ll put the swamp here.”
Now that’s quite a picture, isn’t it? Not much subtlety about it! I mean, swamp
frogs, of all creatures, in a desert digging for water? It is a clear picture
of a misguided search, an elusive goal, the wrong destination.
The reason this cartoon is so profound is
because one of the greatest temptations a person faces in life is to dig for
water in the desert, to look for life where it cannot be found, to attempt to
satisfy deep thirsts with unsatisfactory methods: He wants the promotion so he can
be recognized so he can feel like he is somebody; she wants to please so she
can fit in and feel like she belongs; she wants to earn that money so she can
buy things in order to have status with her peers; he wants to compete and win
so he can feel like a winner; he fantasizes so he can feel like he is in
control; he wants his rival to fail so he can feel more successful. Humans
spend a lot of time and energy digging for water in the desert.
The only soil rich enough to produce the harvest
of satisfaction and contentment is one of depth. A life “well-examined” is the
only life worth living. As Socrates once wrote, “The unaware life is not worth
living.” There must be a willingness to enter into regular reflection about the
foundation of our lives, the character issues, whether or not our choices, our beliefs,
our paradigms are based upon truth and reality bigger than ourselves, like the
reality of God. Anything less produces a shallow life subject to the whims and
shifting of the tides, vulnerable to the storms that blow in and wreak havoc
especially upon shallow lives.
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