Time is the ingredient that gardeners often forget. And the same thing is true in our faith life. The story of the sower in Mark makes the same point. A farmer scatters seed on the ground and then waits for it to grow. Some falls on shallow soil, pops up quickly and withers just as fast when the sun gets too hot.
Birds eat up the seed that falls on the hard soil of the path.
Other seed can't compete with the weeds. But SOME of the seed proves to be sturdy and yields 30 or 60 or a hundred times more grain than what was put into the ground. When we read this story we often focus only on the types of soil, because that determined how well the seed would grow. But there is another point. We need to remind ourselves that, regardless of the type of soil, it takes time for the results to show.