Everyday sayings of Jesus

Falling on stony ground

You’ve given it your best shot. You’ve tried reason, persuasion, warning… and even threats. None of it has worked. Your words have fallen on stony ground.

Jesus used this farming image to describe people who receive his teaching in a rather shallow way. He said that his words are like seeds which seem to take root for a while, but quickly dry up and die. The phrase appears in a story he told known as the parable of the sower…

A sower went out to sow. And it happened, as he sowed, that some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds of the air came and devoured it. Some fell on stony ground, where it did not have much earth; and immediately it sprang up because it had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up it was scorched, and because it had no root it withered away. And some seed fell among thorns; and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no crop. But other seed fell on good ground and yielded a crop that sprang up, increased and produced: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!
Mark 4:3-9

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