God's Ridiculous, Indiscriminate Love

There's something absolutely beautiful about the way God loves, and it's perfectly captured in Jesus's parable of the sower in Mark 4. Picture this farmer who just throws seeds everywhere—on the path, in the rocks, among the weeds, on the good soil. His agricultural technique is questionable at best. Any farming instructor would probably give him an F for seed conservation.

But that's exactly the point.

The sower doesn't pre-select which ground gets the good seed. He's not running soil samples first or checking pH levels. He's just flinging the grace of God around like confetti at a wedding. This is what theologians call prevenient grace—God's love reaching everyone before they even know they need it. Not just the elect, not just some chosen few, but literally everyone gets seeds.

In a world where we're constantly sorting people into categories—worthy and unworthy, deserving and undeserving, insiders and outsiders—God's approach is radically different. Divine love isn't parceled out based on merit or predetermined worthiness. It's broadcast indiscriminately, extravagantly, almost wastefully.

But Jesus doesn't stop there. He explains that The Satan—the accuser, the one who lies and deceives—immediately swoops in to steal this good word from some people. How many of us have heard the good news and then had thoughts creep into our minds: "Nah, that's not me. I'm too messed up." Or maybe we've been taught lies that God is actually a vengeful cosmic killjoy just waiting to smite us. That's the work of the accuser.

These lies are insidious because they sound so reasonable. They masquerade as humility or theological sophistication. But they're actually theft—stealing away the very grace that God has freely scattered in our direction.

Jesus makes an especially pointed comment about the thorny ground, where money and the pursuit of it actively chokes out spiritual growth. In a culture that treats bank accounts like report cards from heaven, Jesus says wealth is actually a spiritual hazard, an active impediment to spiritual flourishing.

You simply cannot serve both God and money, as Jesus says elsewhere. The thorns don't just coexist with the good seed; they actively strangle it.

Grace That Multiplies

So what separates the people who get the parable from those who don't? Jesus makes it clear that the differentiating factor is curiosity. The disciples get closer to Jesus. They ask questions, they lean in, they want to understand. The people on the outside are those who think they already know everything.

Certainty kills curiosity, and curiosity might just be one of God's love languages. The moment we think we have God figured out, we stop listening. The moment we assume we understand how grace works, we stop marveling at its wildness.

The beautiful thing about good soil isn't some sort of genetic spiritual lottery. It's about staying curious, asking questions, and being willing to let God's ridiculous, indiscriminate love take root in your life. And when it does, grace becomes reproductive.

When God's love takes hold in your life, it doesn't just sit there like a trophy on a shelf. It multiplies. Grace creates more grace, more love, more fruit that feeds others. The whole point of grace being received is that it becomes grace that's given.

In a world obsessed with scarcity and competition, God's economy operates on abundance and multiplication. The more grace we give away, the more we have. The more love we share, the more love grows. It's the only investment strategy that's truly bulletproof—because it's backed not by market forces, but by the inexhaustible generosity of God.