If you like growing pumpkins, you have probably heard of Dill’s Atlantic
Giant variety of premium pumpkin seeds. Developed on a family farm in Atlantic
Canada, the pumpkins grown from these seeds have set records around the world.
In 2011, a pumpkin grown in Quebec set a new world record at 1,818.5 pounds
(825 kg). That size of pumpkin could yield almost 1,000 pieces of pie!
When news reporters asked how this pumpkin could grow to such a size,
the farmer replied that it had to do with the soil. The seeds were of a special
large variety, but the soil still had to be right or the pumpkin wouldn’t grow
properly.
The Lord Jesus used an illustration in which He compared different types
of ground to a person’s response to God’s Word (Matt. 13). Some seeds were
eaten by the birds, others started to grow but were choked by the weeds, and
some grew up instantly but had no soil to further their growth. But the seeds
that fell on the good soil “yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty,
some thirty” (v.8).
Each of us needs to ask, “What kind of soil am I?”
God wants to plant His Word in our hearts so we can grow in our knowledge of Him. (RBC)
