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?”
