My husband works on the soil in our garden each Spring. It’s quite a process. He turns over the dirt, pulls out old weeds and crud, mixes in compost, shores up the boxes, sweats. Why all this work? For the veggies of course!

I think of the parable of the sower and seed in Matthew 13. The seed is God’s word. The ground is us. Are we good soil…or shallow, rocky, or thorny? It’s a little funny to think of ourselves as dirt, but hey, good dirt yields good fruit.

And maybe it behooves us to think about the soil of the world. Some places are so impoverished and violent and rocky and thorny, the people barely survive. Like Syria or a hundred other places. Anthony J. D’Angelo, founder of Collegiate EmPowerment said, “When solving problems, dig at the roots instead of just hacking at the leaves.”

Gotta start with the dirt.