"Let anyone with ears, listen ... "

(Please read Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23)

Listen!

God-whispers are flying through the air

as if seeds carried in the beaks

of birds ...

ready to be dropped
wherever they might be dropped.

God-Love is bouncing all around
as if millions of tiny steel pellets
have been loosed from barrels
of confinement ...
rolling and bouncing haphazardly
into the most unlikely of places.

God-Hope is being flung into the air
like seeds from a careless sower
without concern for waste ...
with no plowed ground
or fertilized field in sight.

Listen!

The Sower has plunged a hand
into a sack of promise again ...
throwing seed everywhere.
Can't you hear it?
They bounce off of the rocks
and sink deep into the wet sand.
They are buried in the crevices
of dry, cracked earth
and some find home
in warm, rich soil.

The Sower slings the seed
without regard to soils
or rocks or thorns or drought.
The words "too lavish, how wasteful"
are whispered by naysayers
and those who want
perfectly-prepared soil
before joining in
with the seed-sowing.

The Sower sighs and bends down
to admire the delicate violet
growing from a crack in the cement.
The hand reaches into the sack of
seed and brings out so much
that the hopes and promises spill
and puddle onto the ground.

"Listen", the Sower says.
"Let anyone with ears, listen ...
Be lavish and extravagant
and even what seems a bit
wasteful to some"
(as more seed is hurled into the air).

This Sower walks away,
his path marked by a trail of seeds,
by orchards of fruit-bearing trees
and by violets growing
from cracks in cement.

Let anyone with ears, listen ….