Healings and Parables in Luke – Chapter 8
Joyce Voysey

About Jesus parable of the seed sown in various places (in chapter 8) – by the way side,  upon a rock, among thorns, in good ground: we humans are inclined to try to classify ourselves in one of those areas, but couldn’t we honestly classify ourselves as being in any one of them in different situations?  Don’t we sometimes find that the fowls of the air steal away our inspiration, or that it withers away for lack of depth of ground for it to flourish in, or is choked with thorns?  But we must not fuss, because some falls on good ground and is grandly fruitful.

Question: What do the thorns represent?  Noah Webster’s old (1828) dictionary has:

1. Anything troublesome – St. Paul had a thorn in the flesh  

             2. In Scripture, great difficulties and impediments
             3. Worldly cares; things that prevent the growth of good principles

My note near the healing of the demented man reads: “Self destruction of evil?”  This phrase is a fine subject for study in the Christian Science textbook.  The real man was never touched by the error.  This man was charged by Jesus to “Return to thine own house and shew how great things God hath done unto thee.”  But the parents, whose twelve year old child had died and Jesus brought back to life, were told that “...they should tell no man what was done.”

So why the difference?  My thought (at present reading)  is that it must have been the different states of thought – the Gadarene was able to spread the truth of the Word’s healing power, but the parents’ understanding was not up to a correct interpretation of the event.

The Bible I am using for this blogging is very old, having been half of my Christian Science Bible Lesson set of books for many years (purchased 1990).  As I turn the current pages I find that they are shiny with use and one page has lost it dog-ear.  I reckon these remarkable healings by Jesus and recorded by Luke, must often find their way into the Bible Lesson.