Wayside Seeds

“Some seeds fdl by the wayside.” — Matt. xiii. 4.

There are some men who have no experience, only experiences. They never gain any lesson from life itself, only from what they call the startling events of life. They are stirred into emotion by what seem to them the accidents of the world. When death comes suddenly and unexpectedly they are impressed with solemnity, they are religious for an hour; but the seed has fallen only by the wayside. My soul, is it so with thee? Art thou living simply by the wayside of life? Art thou waking up at stray moments to the conviction that there are solemnities in this life of thine? Art thou living in indifference between the falling of each new seed? Art thou only awakened by what thou callest the catastrophes of life — by death, by war, by commercial panic? Then thou art only catching seeds by the wayside. Yet the way is more solemn than the wayside. No event of thy life is half so startling, half so awful, half so mysterious as thy life itself. Nothing that happens to thee is so worthy of meditation as thine own being. The seeds that fall by the wayside are less important than the intervening space that lies between. The quiet time when there is nothing startling is the most eventful time of all, for it is then that thou thyself art growing — growing by the nourishment of the past seed, and ripening for nourishment by the seed which is to come.

How shall I reach this sense of solemnity, of solemnity everywhere and always? Lord, I can only reach it in Thee. If I felt, like the Psalmist, that Thou wert continually with me, I would feel continually solemn. It is because I feel Thee to be with me only at startling moments that I lose the sense of life’s universal solemnity. Therefore, Thou all-pervading Divine Spirit, do Thou impress me with Thine all-pervadingness. Teach me that Thou art not in one place more than another. Teach me that I cannot flee from Thy presence, that Thou art with me not only in the Bethanies and the Calvaries, but in the common toil of Nazareth, and in the silent solitudes of the wilderness. So, in the sense of Thy continual presence, shall my way be uniformly great, and the events of the wayside shall be startling no more. All life shall be alike solemn when I have learned that I am ever with Thee. I shall cease to live by the impressions of the hour when every breath of my being comes to me as a gift Divine.