Recently, after reading a book about the life of Jesus, I decided it was time to read through the Gospels. For the most part, I’m taking it a chapter a day.

This week I read the Parable of the Sower, one of Jesus’ most well-known parables, in Mark 4; it’s also found in Matthew 13 and Luke 8. The teaching focuses on four outcomes of the sown seeds: stolen, short-lived, choked, and fruitbearing.

Keeping your path receptive to the sown seeds requires diligence. Diligence against predators. Diligence to protect roots. Diligence to prioritize eternal things. Diligence to stay hungry and thirsty.

The featured picture on this post is from my back yard. Fortunate for me, HOA fees keep the community where I now live quite immaculate. In the month that I’ve lived here, it’s clear diligence is heavily disciplined.

The state of my heart and soul is no one else’s responsibility. I can’t pay a fee for someone else to be diligent on my behalf. Pretty sure that leads to wrong priorities, unprotected and rootless living. If my heart was originally set on eternity, it’s in my best interest to diligently maintain that origin.

Keep the seeds coming.