Sometimes, life happens and we experience disappointment. No one likes that feeling especially when it comes totally unexpected or from someone or somewhere you least expected. At such times, giving up and losing hope look really appealing but today God has a message for us concerning our disappointments. 

Recently, I started to see the parable of the sower from a different angle. The common explanation of that parable is that some people hear the word of GOD and let it take root in them, some others leave it to be choked by strange doctrines, some others have a stony heart and the seeds never get to grow well and for some, the word never gets the chance to grow in them before birds of the air take it all away. Different people with different dispositions towards the gospel. But God showed me that same parable from a different angle. 

“A farmer went out to sow his seed.  As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.  Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow.  But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

Matthew 13:3-9 NIV

From this, we can infer that out of a hundred seeds (this is imaginary, there was no specific number mentioned) not all hundred of them will germinate. Some seeds will fall by the way or get stuck in the wrong places. This parable nevertheless reveals to us that some other seeds fell on good soil and produced yields in multiple folds of what was sown. At that point, whatever loss had been sustained would have mattered little because the returns from what was sown were more than enough to compensate for the loss. 

God is telling us that it’s not out of the ordinary to feel disappointed but what we must know is that the good will always outweigh the bad. It might be a job you lost or a school admission or a bad grade in a particular subject at school. God’s encouragement to you is that there are still a few seeds that will fall on good soil and produce results in multiple folds. Do not get tired of sowing. Keep sowing, keep hoping.

What is now important is that you do not stay down. Even if you’ve been let down, don’t remain there(1 Sam. 30:6). Take encouragement from the word of God that makes us understand that all things –including the disappointments –work together for good for those who love the Lord (Rom. 8:28). Joseph experienced so so many disappointments but in the end, we see how all of it worked together for his good. What his brothers meant for evil, God turned around for good (Gen. 50:20).

The sower would have been so disappointed knowing that some of his seeds fell away on the road, some got scorched on the rocks and the few that germinated got choked by thorns. But when the yield from the few other seeds that fell on the good soil came, it was enough to ease the discomfort of all the disappointment. 

One thing about God is that you can always trust in Him. Through your disappointments, you can learn to trust what God says because He is true to His word. He tells us in Jeremiah 29:11 that His plans for us are of good, to give us a future and expected end. That was one thing that Joseph held on to despite all the letdowns; trust. The devil will try to turn our hearts and confuse us into thinking God doesn’t care about us hence all the disappointment we have faced. But we, like Joseph, must keep trusting in God. Armed with the lesson from the parable of the sower that some of our efforts and hope would still yield bountiful results, we must keep sowing.