A path through which the daily traffic passes

First let us get the scene itself clearly before us. The path, which is spoken of here, is not intended to receive seed; its function is to enable people to walk upon it. It is beaten down and quite smooth. There are even asphalted paths and there are asphalted hearts too. They are smooth and often they look quite presentable. In human intercourse they play their part. Paths and streets also have names; you must know them if you want to get somewhere. And there are a great many people whom you must know—just as you must know these streets—if you want to get somewhere. They hold key positions, they are influential, and only through them will you get somewhere. This is good and quite in order. Nobody will blame a person for being influential. And nobody will blame a path for not being a field or for being hard. On the contrary! But that which is an advantage in one way can be a hindrance in another. The fact is that seed cannot very well take root on a much-traveled and smooth-beaten path.

A person who is only a path through which the daily traffic passes, who is no more than a busy street where people go rushing by hour after hour and where there is never a moment of rest, will hardly provide the soil in which the eternal seed can grow. People who are always on the go are the most in danger.

A person who can no longer be receptive “soil” for at least fifteen minutes each day, who never allows himself to be “plowed” and opened up, and never waits for what God drops into his furrow, that person has actually already lost the game at the crucial point. The rich and the great people of this world, whose names everybody knows, because they are always out where the traffic is thick, are often very poor people. It is so dangerously easy for them to think they are something great when the rushing, heavy traffic keeps constantly passing over them. And yet they are infinitely poorer than a poor, nameless furrow where fruit is springing up.

– Helmut Thielicke, The Waiting Father: Sermons on the Parables of Jesus, Chapter IV