It’s not about the stalk

“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”

- Jesus (Matthew 13:23)

Several years ago, a book came out that soon showed up on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal best seller list. The book was written by Rick Warren and was titled The Purpose Driven Life. That book has now sold over 50 million copies and has been translated into 137 languages.

While bookstores might have put the book on the shelves marked “Self-help”, the first line of the book would have made that designation seem ironic. Warren starts the book off by saying, “It’s not about you.”

It might seem strange to say that the purpose of your life is not about you, but 50 million people found that this statement rang true to them. One of the reasons I think it rings true is because, as the book points out, our lives are part of a wider, grander purpose than ourselves. When we think about it, we want this to be true. We need this to be true.

Another reason this theme rings true is that it’s the theme of the All-Time best-selling book, which Warren’s book was based upon. Warren’s book is based upon the words of Jesus, and Jesus tells us that our lives fit into the awesome plan of a beautiful, loving God.

Jesus told many stories to try to get across to us the meaning of our lives. In one of them, called, “The Parable of the Sower,” Jesus says that our lives should be like good soil, which, is soil that allows God’s seed to sink in and germinate and grow, and eventually produce more seeds. In other words, the purpose of our lives is to allow the stuff that God puts into us to be reproduced in us in such a way that it can be given out and planted in someone else’s life-soil, so that they, in turn, can reproduce in the same way…expanding God’s Kingdom.

A life that’s reproducing God’s purposes is the purpose of your life. It’s that kind of life that is healthy, meaningful and fulfilling. A life that’s completely focused on our own needs is going to be stunted, shallow and lacking meaning. This is not to say that you and I don’t have personal needs, or that we should ignore the needs that we have. We need to eat, we need to take care of ourselves and our family, we need rest and refreshment to re-energize ourselves in order to survive. But meeting those needs is not the “end” of our lives, meeting those needs is the “means to the end” of our lives. Our purpose is to give ourselves away…as Jesus did, himself.

Our tendency as human beings, though, is to enjoy the feeding part; the giving out part…not so much. Even in our spiritual lives, we enjoy the input we get from sermons, and from Bible studies, from good books and songs that really feed us, and so we should. We need to be fed in order to mature. But the point of maturing is to get to the point that we can pour our lives into someone else.

This is Jesus’ point in the “Parable of the Sower”. The point of the seed being planted in our heart-soil isn’t just so we can grow to be just a big, beautiful corn stalk. It’s to grow up as a stalk so we can support big, beautiful ears of corn; ears that hold hundreds of more seeds that can then be planted in hundreds of other heart-soils. It’s not about the stalk. Our lives are about developing more seeds that can, themselves, be planted and produce more seeds.