Shallow Soil

If you plant something in a soil that is a bit rocky, what ever you plant may rise quite quickly and you will congratulate yourself on your farming or gardening skills.  Then it dies just as quickly.  What happened?  Well, the soil lacked much depth, so the seed did not have the possibility of going to deep root itself.  So it did what it could do which is the bloom upwards, live a little and then poof.  It is a great metaphor for one who is abandoning or surrendering themselves to some spiritual process, program, Power, God.  They feel so good, so relieved and seem to begin to blossom, that is change, quite suddenly. Wow, isn't this surrender thing great!  Instead of smooth sailing from then on, the hard work now begins.  The hard work is the spiritual seed going deep into a person so as to blossom later, deeper and better.  The initial good feeling passes.  The person wishes for the euphoria of that first surrender feeling.  Why is it so hard after the surrender?  If you believe in a personal God, is not this God happy with surrender?  Yes, but.  The "but" is that this world is full of one day, one week, one month surrender people.  I am a great example.  So I doubt God is impressed.  The hard work is that your God takes you seriously, and patiently begins to reveal all the mess of what gets in the way of growing up.  Surrender makes you fell better for the moment, but it does not change you.  That takes time and patience and effort.  Prayer might be very scattered, dull, and other people might seem even worse than when you actively judged them in the past.  Things are not going your way.  All this is part of the surrender seed going deep into you so that your change will be more permanent.   We all have deep rich soil.  Just got to get through the thorns, rocks and such.