Where are we planted?

I remember the baptist church I grew up in had a window similar to this one right where our churches have a rosette window.  It recorded the parable of the sower and while I was a child I had never known what the window meant or recorded.  I have heard sermons regarding this but I think it is always important to ask new questions about a text because the Word of God is a living thing and changes with years, experience, knowledge, and reading.

Today I think about how parables are supposed to hit us as kind of preposterous.  There should be something that sounds off or strange to our ears and that is where we find the questions.  I grew up around gardeners.  My mom and my nana had big gardens in their yards.  I always ended up pulling up the plants and not the weeds.  I do remember how they prepared the ground to receive the seeds and we never would have just thrown the seeds out hoping that the ground might take them.  You always planted them beneath the soil.  This has made me wonder about this story. 

Is the seed thrown far and wide supposed to signify God's abundance?  Do we limit that abundance when we ourselves deem some soil unfit for receiving the good news?  Also, can we all be the different types of soil:  some days we are fertile and ready to hear whatever God throws our way, some days we are so filled with concerns of life that it just gets choked out by the weeds and never develops into anything, and other days we are affected by others who have deemed us unfit to receive and it gets snatched away before we have the chance for it to settle on us? 

I think we have to push ourselves to ask these deeper questions.  Then we find new ways to encounter the good news Jesus came to share.  Today it is God's abundance in our lives.  Don't you think we should spread this good news further?