"Yesterday I talked about blindness and want to continue that today. We have "lost sight" of Jesus message, no pun intended. When your blind, you don't find God, you are found. In looking at the parables, four are about things hidden or lost. The hidden treasure in the field, the yeast in the flour, the coin in the house, and the lost sheep. When things are lost we are required to search for that which is not obvious. We have to WANT to see it. That's why many never move beyond where they are, they don't want to see it. Then there are the parables about growth over time, mustard seed, leaven, and invisible salt. Then there is the parable of the sower in Mark 4:1-9. The parable says the seed fell on several types of soil. Some just aren't ready for the Word. It's not their fault; for when the student is ready, the teacher will arrive. To receive the word and bear fruit of it, the soul and the soil must be broken up and unsettled. As long as we are too comfortable, to sure we have the whole truth, to convinced we are right, we're just rocks and thorns, alongside the hardened path of repetition. Anyone throwing seeds at us are just wasting their time. The beginners mind of child-likeness, is the only place thirty, sixty and one hundred fold have potential. It's hard for most churched people to have a beginners mind. They have heard it all before and assume if they have heard it, they know it. Information equals knowing to them. There's no room for anything more and certainly not different. So we " blind" ourselves. In central PA, we have lots of Amish and their horse and buggies have no problem navigating busy streets. The horses have their vision restricted by blinders to only what is ahead and what they look directly at. It's the unexpected things in their peripheral vision that spooks them. The same is true for us. That's why your pastors probably don't want you to stop and look closely at anything except what is right in front of you at "his lead"."
Stan Tyra