Book of Common Prayer
Prayer for wisdom and gratitude
9 For this reason, from the day we heard it, we haven’t stopped praying for you. We’re asking God to fill you with the knowledge of what he wants in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. 10 This will mean that you’ll be able to conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the Lord, and so give him real delight, as you bear fruit in every good work and grow up in the knowledge of God. 11 I pray that you’ll be given all possible strength, according to the power of his glory, so that you’ll have complete patience and become truly steadfast and joyful.
12 And I pray that you will learn to give thanks to the father, who has made you fit to share the inheritance of God’s holy ones in the light. 13 He has delivered us from the power of darkness, and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son. 14 He is the one in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
The parable of the sower
13 That very day Jesus went out of the house and sat down beside the sea. 2 Large crowds gathered around him, so he got into a boat and sat down. The whole crowd was standing on the shore.
3 He had much to say to them, and he said it all in parables.
“Listen!” he said. “Once there was a sower who went out to sow. 4 As he sowed, some seed fell beside the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some seed fell on rocky soil, where it didn’t have much earth. It sprang up at once because it had no depth of soil. 6 But when the sun was high it got scorched, and it withered because it didn’t have any root. 7 Other seed fell in among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it. 8 Other seed fell into good soil, and produced a crop, some a hundred times over, some sixty, and some thirty times over. 9 If you’ve got ears, then listen!”
The reason for parables
10 His disciples came to him.
“Why are you speaking to them in parables?” they asked.
11 “You’ve been given the gift of knowing the secrets of the kingdom of heaven,” he replied, “but they haven’t been given it. 12 Anyone who already has something will be given more, and they will have plenty. But anyone who has nothing—even what they have will be taken away! 13 That’s why I speak to them in parables, so that they may look but not see, and hear but not understand or take it in. 14 Isaiah’s prophecy is coming true in them:
You will listen and listen but won’t understand,
you will look and look but not see.
15 This people’s heart has gone flabby and fat,
their ears are muffled and dull,
their eyes are darkened and shut;
so that they won’t see with their eyes
or hear with their ears, or know in their heart,
or turn back again for me to restore them.
16 “But there’s great news for your eyes: they can see! And for your ears: they can hear!
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.