But there is a fourth kind of soil. There is the seed that falls upon the good earth and takes root and grows to maturity. This crop, we are told, is a harvest that will bear fruit a hundred fold. Jesus mentions this last because itis the thrust of the story. True, there are failures, but the good news is that there is also victory.

Now, here is the hard part. Our efforts in life are not always measurable. Sometimes, you may not see the final product. You may not see the actual harvest. Sometimes all we can do is plant a seed, and trust that God will do the rest. A school teacher works with a troubled child, but she may not know how the story ultimately turns out. All she can do is plant a seed of love and trust that God will do the rest. Sometimes just a word of encouragement to a person in need, or a shared personal thought and someone picks up on it and it gets them through a dark night.

Don't ever underestimate the power of a seed. Did you know that in 1959 there were 1 million Roman Catholics and 600,000 Protestants in China. That may sound like a lot, but when you compare it to a population that is rapidly approaching 1 billion people, you understand what a tiny seed that represented. Then in 1959 China closed it's doors to the outside world. Many people began to wrap a burial shroud around the Christian church in China. They said that it would never survive. Then in 1979 China again opened its doors to the West and to the rest of the world. And a strange thing had happened. That tiny seed 20 years earlier had taken root. The number of Roman Catholics during those dark years rose from 1 million to 3 million and the number of Protestants rose from 600,000 to 3 million. The church in a time of persecution and hardship, had grown 53% in a twenty year period. How do you explain it? Fertile soil! There was obviously a hunger for the gospel.