October 28, 2025 Prayer Gathering

The focus of St. James Presbyterian Church’s weekly 30-minute Prayer Break Gathering is based on one of the scriptures of our PCUSA Daily Lectionary Matthew 13.1-9.  Today we will be focusing our thoughts on verses 8-9.

Matthew 13.1-9
1That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the lake. 2Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. 3And he told them many things in parables, saying: “Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. 5Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. 6But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. 7Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. 8Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 9Let anyone with ears listen!”

Meditation: Seeds of Prayer in Good Soil
“Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen.”
Jesus sits beside the sea, sunlight trembling on the water, the crowd pressing close, hungry for a word that will meet them where they live. And so, he tells them a story they can see in their minds: a sower walking through the fields, scattering seed with an open hand.
It is not a cautious image. The sower does not test the ground before sowing, does not guard each handful as if seed were too precious to lose. The sower throws with abandon—trusting that life, once released, will find its way. Seed flies into the wind. Some lands on the path, some among rocks, some among thorns. But some—just some—finds good soil.
This is how prayer lives. Prayer is not measured or careful. It is the throwing of faith into the wind of God. Every time we pray, we sow possibility into the unseen. We scatter hope into mystery. Some prayers take root quickly—visible, green with joy. Others fall on hard ground and seem to lie there, silent. And still others disappear from our sight altogether, buried in places we cannot reach. Yet still, we pray. We keep sowing. Because this is what faith does—it trusts the process even when the field looks empty.
When Jesus speaks of good soil yielding a hundredfold, sixtyfold, thirtyfold, he is not praising efficiency; he is revealing divine extravagance. God is not stingy with grace. God is the Sower who keeps flinging mercy across the landscape of our lives, even into the dry places. The miracle of the parable is not that some seed fails—it is that any grows at all, and when it does, the yield is beyond imagining.
So when it feels as though your prayers have been wasted—when healing delays, when peace is still a dream, when the world’s thorns seem too thick to let hope rise—remember the sower. Remember that God never stops walking the field. The act of prayer itself is planting, and every prayer offered in faith finds its way into God’s keeping. What looks barren today may already be stirring beneath the surface of grace.
Some of our prayers will bloom before our eyes. Others will lie hidden in the dark soil of time, waiting for a season only God can name. But no prayer, once sown in love, is lost. Each carries the potential of resurrection.
Prayer is the patient work of trust. It teaches us to let go of our need to control outcomes and to live instead in holy expectation. The waiting itself becomes a kind of prayer—the pause between planting and harvest, the stillness in which God is quietly tending the soil of the soul.
And so Jesus ends not with explanation, but invitation: “Let anyone with ears listen.” Listen—to the wind moving through the field. Listen—to the unseen roots breaking open the earth. Listen—to the whisper of God saying, Keep sowing. Keep believing. Keep praying.
Because prayer is never wasted. Every word, every silence, every longing cast toward heaven becomes seed in the hand of God. And the Spirit—patient, persistent, and full of life—knows just where to plant it.
And now, as the Spirit moves quietly among us,
and as we prepare to lift the prayers that rise from the soil of our hearts,
I ask you this question—one that echoes across every field of faith, every life of hope:
For what do you pray?