September 1, 2026 – Daily Devotional
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” – Ezekiel 36:26
How can we be a light in the world? How do we follow the way of Jesus? We’re told the greatest commandments are to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. But being human is hard, and Jesus knows this. He teaches in parables that can seem straightforward yet often hold deeper truths than we first perceive.
I’ve been enjoying Amy-Jill Levine’s study on The Gospel of Mark. She breaks down the original Greek to help convey the context behind specific passages, and shares moments when her students have given her fresh insight into scripture.
Take the Parable of the Sower: grain tossed on the path is eaten by birds; grain on rocky soil has no root; grain among thorns is strangled; and grain planted in good soil thrives. Levine first summarizes the parable simply: some people never get it, some get it and give up, some get it and get distracted, and some stay the course.
But she doesn’t stop there, because that’s what Jesus asks of us—to keep looking deeper. She poses a harder question: How do we become the good seed if we can’t control where we land?
While leading a prison ministry, one of her incarcerated students offered this interpretation:
“I was the soil, choked by thorns. I had no time for the gospel because other things were more important: power, prestige, money. Since being incarcerated and being around other men who had the same experiences as I did, but who turned to Jesus, I’ve learned how, with help, to clear away the thorns. Barren soil can be treated with fertilizer; rocks can be dug out, and thorns can be cleared. Seeds, when tended, can yield enormous growth… even seeds that are choked or eaten by birds will eventually return and replenish the soil. Nothing will go to waste. It may take longer for some of those seeds to germinate, but eventually they all can contribute to a good harvest.”
This reframes the parable entirely. It’s not just a tidy sorting of people into categories—good soil versus bad. It’s a picture of transformation. The soil isn’t fixed; it can be tended. The thorns aren’t permanent; they can be cleared. Even what looks like failure or loss isn’t the end of the story—we can still become part of the good harvest.
That’s the kind of truth Jesus builds into his parables: not a simple checklist, but an invitation to dig deeper, ask harder questions, and find hope in places/people we might have written off. If a man in prison can look at soil choked by thorns and see the possibility of a harvest, maybe that’s the real lesson—that no one, and no soil, is beyond tending. That’s how we become a light. Not by getting it right the first time, but by staying willing to be replanted.
-Logan Fish, Edmond Campus Director of Church and Life
