deeply rooted

A few months ago, I planted two different trees of our local fruit. The soil type of the ground where I planted them are a little bit coarse and sandy. Prior to that, a friend of mind informed me that soil of that type is not very suitable for certain fruit. But I insisted to try it out. For the first two weeks, everything seemed alright. I watered them every other day. Both trees showed sign of adapting to the environment. A month passed by, one of them began to show unhealthy sign. Leaves began to drop and turned brown. I took an additional effort to watered it everyday. After two months, it dried out and totally gone. The other one still surviving until now.

The Bible talks about the very same situation in the parable of the sower. If the ground is coarse, sandy and hard, any seed will face difficulties in adapting. If our heart is 'hard, coarse and sandy' the words of God will not grow in our heart even though we water it with prayer, meditation of the words of God and singing song of praise to God. The soil type needs to be change. Need to be replaced with a new type. The 'coarse, sandy and hard' soil need to be soften, made finer and blended with more nutrient. We need to get rid of our 'coarse, sandy and hard' heart.

The two different types of fruit could also be seen as faith of two different Christians. The shared the same 'ground' (went through same trials), they went to same church, attending same prayer meetings, cell group meetings and did many similar ministries. Ideally, they grew in faith together. But one of them didn't last for long. His faith weathered and melted even with all the watering. Why?

The reason is that the other tree has long and strong root. It penetrates deep into the earth and manage to find adequate water for it to grow. The other tree only depend on the water that I gave every time I watered it. It root didn't go deep into the earth. The faith of the other Christian did not go deeply into his heart. We saw him growing in the beginning but that was only the external. The root of his faith did not spread widely and deeply in his heart. That was why when he was alone, when no one watered him, his faith weathered and melted. The other Christians knows that deep down there is hope, there is water. He went on spreading and digging deep with his root and found water, plenty of water to keep on growing and producing fruits.