“Hear this! A Sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground where it had little soil. It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep. And when the sun rose, it was scorched and it withered for lack of roots. Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it and it produced no grain. And some seed fell on rich soil and produced fruit. It came up and grew and yielded thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.” He added, “Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear.”-Mark 4:3-10
The Sower
We all know this parable. Even if you have never been to church, you have likely heard this in one form or another. I once heard it at a staff meeting where the supervisor was talking about the skills and education we all have and how those skills are used, either to their fullest or weakly and wasted. He asked each of us, “Are you wasting your talents on rocky soil or are you using them to cultivate good soil?”
Not exactly the point of the parable, but it made me think.
When I was a kid, we planted seeds very carefully. We dug rows and rows into the good soil and carefully planted seeds spaced apart so that the plants would grow strong without fighting one another for food or water. We left space to hoe the weeds out from between the plants and where we could examine them for bugs or dead leaves. We grew food for sustenance like corn, beans, lettuce, tomatoes, squash, potatoes, green chili peppers, peas and more. We watered the plants at different times and in different amounts because the needs of each plant was different. We raised pigs, goats, chickens, ducks and more for the same reason. We built little fences to keep the chickens and geese out, shooed away other critters and worried when the weather was too hot or too cold.
We never grew grains like the Sower in the gospel. In the parable, he is walking the field sowing seed of grain, likely wheat and he walks up and down the field, a satchel around his neck reaching in and scattering the seed somewhat indiscriminately. That seemed a little odd to me. After all, seed was valuable and you wouldn’t just throw it and let the wind scatter it. And wouldn’t you want to cover it up as soon as it was scattered into the field? But here, the Sower is, well, not lazy but certainly careless.
Some seed is immediately devoured by the birds. Some lands where the ground is more rock than soil and the seed can’t take root. Some is tossed among mature weeds at the edge of the field, has to compete with them and eventually become more like the weeds themselves, producing nothing.
Most of the seeds, we assume, produce grain in abundance because the soil is good and the field is cared for by the farmer and the point of the story is what kind of soil are you, but the Sower is where it all starts.
I started out on good soil. We were baptized as infants. Sown into the Catholic church. We prayed every day in my house when we were kids. We were sent to Catholic school for religious instruction when we came of age, went to mass every day and learned all about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. But there were problems in the church that we didn’t know about until it was too late. Evil men in positions of authority took advantage of children and their families. The soil there had become full of weeds. When it became known in our parish, we were pulled out of school and sent to public school where my eyes were opened up.
There, the pace was quicker and there was no place to put down roots. The mix of good and not so good kids took a toll on me. I needed to stand out and unlike being the holiest kid in Catholic school would get you noticed, the most disruptive kids usually got the most attention. Some kids had only one parent, some had parents, but no discipline at home and so did as they please. Some needed more attention, but couldn’t get it because of the overwhelming numbers of kinds in school. Controlled chaos.
I remember the day after it was announced that students would no longer have to adhere to a dress code; slacks and a collared shirt for boys and modest skirts and blouses for the girls. That day, kids came in all kinds of weird attire. One girl showed up in a bikini. That day the dress code was modified and a list was handed to all classes of the things that were not acceptable. While we wouldn’t be going back to the old dress code, there would be rules and anyone caught wearing distracting clothing, haircuts or makeup would be sent home. I was truly living amongst the weeds.
As I grew up, I got further and further into the weeds. It wasn’t the educational environment that was at fault, it was my choice of friends, music, reading material and the influences of older kids. Not wanting to be left out, I emulated people who knew little about what it meant to know God.
Coming of age in the 60s and 70s, all the rules were out the window. The mantra was about self and faux compassion for others. I indulged with everyone else. Sex, drugs and rock and roll. Like the birds gobbling up the seeds on the path, little bits of my soul were being pecked away. I was losing myself to the world. Still, I had my faith to fall back on and I went to church every now and then to see if I still felt the closeness to God I had had as a child.
Then somewhere in my mid-twenties, I survived a car accident. I had been driving in a drunken stupor, passed out and flown off the road in the middle of the night. Not even my truck was damaged. As I surveyed the damage the next day, I could see the path woven by me as I swerved this way and that off of the road, nearly coming into contact with trees, fences and probably other cars. Something saved me and my upbringing told me that something was God.
After that, none of my vices felt the same. There was always something missing. Whatever false joy these things had brought me was now gone. I started to go to church more. As I started to find my roots again, another person was introduced into my life. He was a hard drinking, carousing friend who was, get this, an atheist. Not just any atheist, but a Madelyn Murray O’hare disciple of the first order. I was back in the weeds and the fun of destruction was back. We were drinking and whoring buddies now, out every night picking up women, getting smashed and generally wreaking havoc. After the bars closed, we would head back to my apartment and have these long discussions about religion and God verses humanism, and it seemed to me that my friend won every argument. And then something miraculous happened.
My friend came to get me as per usual on an off night when I wasn’t playing a gig somewhere. I was dressed and ready to go, but he sat me down and told me he had something to say. I thought something bad had happened to him. He was my best friend, my running partner, my ride or die. I asked what was going on. Then he spoke.
“I’ve become a born-again Christian,” he said almost silently.
I stared at him for a second and then burst out laughing, but he sat there and didn’t say a word. We were always pulling practical jokes on one another, and this had to be his best yet. I told him that I wasn’t falling for this lame joke and that nobody would ever believe him and that it was getting late and if we didn’t get out there, all the good-looking honeys were going to be gone, but he just sat there. He wasn’t kidding, or he was taking this practical joke to the nth degree. We just sat there staring at each other for a long time.
I asked what this was all about. Had he met some Christian girl that had turned his head? I knew he had been searching for something, experimenting with pyramid power and reading a book from the Urantia Foundation, a new religion that had more to do with “celestial beings” than with God or any of the traditional non-Christian deities. His answer surprised me. He said that during all of our late-night religious debates, he had never been able to sway me from my core belief in God and Jesus Christ. He said it had led him back to the church of his family, the Episcopal Church with roots in the Anglican Church. He had confessed his sins and given his life to God. I was blown away. Somewhere out here in the weeds, my friend had found God.
My friend became and on fire Christian. He preached the gospel whenever he could and gave his life to God. One-hundred percent. I stopped drinking, not because of my friend, but because of the loss of nearly all of the friends of my youth to drugs, alcohol, suicide, homicide and just general bad health. My friend went on to start a worldwide evangelistic Christian ministry. He had found his way to the good soil and had himself become the Sower.
After I stopped drinking and whoring around, I settled down, got married and found steady work for myself that was not in a bar somewhere. I was back to the good soil, putting down roots, but again found myself wandering out into the weeds. This time it was a different vice. Women. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t stay away. It ended my marriage and put me back on the track of self-destruction. Every person I came in contact with at that time, I destroyed.
Eventually, that all came to an end. I met a woman who was extremely patient with me but also not willing to put up with my nonsense. I’ve been married to her for nearly a quarter century. In that time, I cared for my widowed mother until her passing and I’ve learned to care for my friends and their families as we all age together. I think this time, I have found my way back.
I couldn’t have been more than four or five when my dad bought those two acres in the rural north valley to build a home for his growing family. I remember standing on a railroad tie with my mother and older brother and sister that was chained to the back of my dad’s pickup truck. We were hanging on for dear life to each other and the the tailgate, ballast, as he dragged us around the property to clear the weeds and level the ground. We all came out of it a dusty mess, but man was that fun.
Once we began living in our half-built house, we set aside a quarter-acre behind the house for a garden. It was my brother’s and my task to clear the stones from that plot. It was backbreaking work, digging large rocks from the soil and stacking them all around as a border for the garden. We had to clear the irrigation ditch of weeds and fill in the gopher holes all the way to the main irrigation canal nearly a quarter mile away, but once that was done, we could turn the soil, make the rows and begin planting.
I think at nearly 70, I have most of the weeds and rocks out of my life. I’m firmly planted in God’s word and while it hasn’t always been easy, I have been richly blessed. These few words that I scatter here and there in my books and general rantings are not tossed within the boundaries of my field where only the cultivated soil lay. They are scattered indiscriminately like the Sower in the parable. They are for everyone and maybe, just maybe, they will take root in someone’s soul.
Jose Antonio Ponce-February 17th, 2026
Copyright 2026 by Jose Antonio Ponce