A couple of weeks ago, Susan and I went to Blackacre State Nature Preserve and Historic Homestead. It's about fifteen minutes from our house, which we've lived in now for almost twenty-five years. And I had never heard of the place.

So, it turns out Blackacre has a number of trails. One goes past a waterfall, which we hiked. There's a historic home that gives tours, and a Saturday morning petting zoo where the kids can feed the animals. Three hundred acres, out past Middletown.

There are also garden plots out there, hundreds of them, in different sizes, that people rent and work as community gardens. And we ended up spending just as much time walking through people's plots as we did on the trails. There was a butterfly and hummingbird garden. There was a garden for herbs and spices. Lots of corn, squash, and tomatoes. There were people out late in the afternoon, watering and weeding, and everybody was friendly.

As we were leaving, we walked past a woman bent over, weeding her plot. When we got closer, she stood up, and we could see she was pregnant. My wife is a nurse in the NICU, and she's been pregnant herself, so we felt qualified to make the diagnosis.

Susan asked how far along she was. Thirty-six weeks. So she's in the home stretch.

It was hot and humid, and all I could think was, "She must be miserable."

Susan complimented her on the garden, but the woman was frazzled. She said, "I usually try to come every week to weed. But I missed last week. And now I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to catch back up."

Boy howdy. I understand that sentiment. Especially this summer. It feels like the weeds got together and hatched some kind of plant-based conspiracy, growing out of control like we're in a primeval rainforest. And the ticks and mosquitoes have gotten in on the party in really committed ways. So I guess what I'm saying is, be careful out there. It feels like the planet's rising up in a rebellious attempt to kill us all, or at least ruin our tomatoes.

But there's a pregnant woman out there who's behind on her weeding and pretty sure she'll never catch up. But she's still out there anyway. And she gave me a little hope I needed on a Friday afternoon.

I've been thinking about her since we saw her in the garden. Partly because I know the feeling, not the pregnant part, of course, but the being behind and never thinking you're going to catch up. But also because Jesus tells a parable about exactly that kind of afternoon.

He's down by the sea, and the crowd's so big he has to climb into a boat and push out onto the water just to have room to talk. And what he decides to talk about—with the whole crowd standing on the shore—is dirt.

A farmer goes out to scatter seed. Some of it lands on the path, and the birds get it. Some of it lands on rocky ground and comes up fast and dies faster. Some falls among the thorns. And some finds good soil, where it bears thirty, sixty, a hundredfold.

We know this one. The parable of the sower. It’s in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Matthew even gave us the answer key. Because a few verses after he tells the parable, Jesus goes back through it to explain. The hardened path is the one who hears and doesn't understand. The rocky ground is the one that takes in the seed with joy but has no room for it to root. And on down the line.

Which is usually where we turn the whole thing into a quiz. You know what I'm talking about, right?

“Which soil are you?”

And we all do a little quiet math in our heads, and most of us decide we're probably the good soil, or at least trying hard to be, and so we go home more or less relieved. Got out of there with our consciences still intact.

But I want to stop for a second and think about the thorns. Because the thorns are the one place, apart from the good soil, where the seed actually rooted.

Listen to how Jesus says it. "As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of this age and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing."

Notice what that does and doesn't say. It doesn't say the seed was bad. It doesn't say the soil was wicked. It only says the thorns grew up and choked it. The word that was cast here wasn't rejected or argued down. It was just crowded out.