“He that was sown upon the good ground, this is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; who verily beareth fruit . . .”

The parable of the seeds brings to mind something that happened when we built a home in the suburbs and rolled out those big green carpets of sod. A city boy, I was a stranger in a strange land, completely out of my element.

To my amazement, within a few days a green shoot poked up through the freshly laid sod and began growing straight and tall as a tree. I started watering and fertilizing it, and within a few weeks it stood three feet high. I was standing in my yard watering it one Saturday when my neighbor came over and said, “What are you doing?”

“I’m watering my tree,” I said.

“That’s no tree,” he said. “That’s a weed.”

“A what?”

“A pigweed. You’re watering a pigweed.” And he grabbed it by the stalk and yanked it out of the ground. The three-foot tall stalk came clean out - - without any roots. The only thing sustaining that weed had been my fertilizer and water.

In a sense, I’ve watered many weeds in my life  - - overgrown problems, cares and concerns that would never bear fruit. And, perhaps, you have done the same thing.

In Matthew 13: 18-23, when Christ speaks of the seed that grows among the weeds, He says it is choked out by the cares, concerns, riches and comforts of the world.

Every material possession that we bring into our lives carries with it cares and concerns. Someday each and every one of them will wear out, rust out or decay.

For example, you buy a used car only to discover it's a lemon. That’s pigweed. You buy a new house only to find that, after a hard rain, there's a 'swimming pool' in the basement  That’s pigweed.

You buy a new desktop computer only to discover that it isn't compatible with your laser printer. That’s pigweed.

Those are the kinds of weeds that can sprout up in each of our lives, and ironically, they are often the things we water the most.

In Matthew 13: 18-23, Christ urges us to lead a fruitful, productive life. Unlike the farmer in the parable, who passed through his field once and was gone, ours is a loving God who tends his field daily, making sure it yields one hundred-fold.  God is ever ready to reach down and grab our problems by the stalk and in the same breath whisper in our ear, “Pigweed . . .  don’t water the pigweed.”