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What if I'd taken a different job? What if I'd been more careful? What if I'd seen the financial meltdown coming? What if I hadn't seen that car coming at the last second? What if I had taken the doctor's advice? What if I were blond - or buff - or brave - or lucky. What if ---- What if ----

Let's apply the question to Jesus' parable of the sower.

What if a farmer has a thousand acres of fertile land, brand new John Deere cultivators, plenty of protein-nitrogen fertilizer, ideal weather conditions, the experience of generations in his ancestry, abundant water, fuel, silos, hungry markets, and good prices, but he has no seed?

What if he acquired all else, but had no seed?

The result is ruin. If he doesn't have seed, he has nothing.

What if he has all this and the seed? But what if the rooster crows the first day of spring, morning dawns in perfect condition, but the farmer stays in bed? What if he does not go out to plant and sow?

He's finished.

What if he rises and takes the precious seed but is sparing with it? He only cautiously and guardedly lets the seed go. What if he only plants one seed today and one next week? You know. The harvest which could have been abundant, and would have been, simply isn't.

What if the farmer has friends and colleagues who urge him to sow the seed generously and trustingly. They remind him of the promise in the seed and the potential and profit only the seed can bring but he has no ears for them? He does not hear, care, or understand.

Though having ears, if he will not hear, the loss is certain. The seed is wasted, and the yield is naught.

But there are other "what if" questions.

What if the farmer liberally sows this precious seed and some falls on a path? Lamentably, there it will be trampled and never grow. But what if passersby do their best to step cautiously? What if that?

Yes, people may try, but no one can keep birds from spotting the exposed seed and devouring it.

What then if some of the seed lands among rocks or falls among thorns? What if shallow soil prevents moisture or noxious weeds dominate the ground? Every farmer knows the sprouted seed will not survive. It is to be expected that seed is at risk when a sower sows. Some will fall and never produce. But the loss is not the farmer's.

You see, the seed which falls on good soil compensates enormously any deficit or damage. The one hundredfold yield swamps whatever loss had been. Such a yield is not harvested as marginal. It overflows. It is such a mammoth crop for the garner that it makes every "what if" question immaterial.

The farmer is so abundantly blessed, so brimming with bounty and goodness, that no second-guesses, no regrets or brooding even come to mind.

"What if" has been replaced with "what is."

What is? That's the question in Jesus' parable.

The answer is The Seed.

The seed -- that's what is. As Jesus explains later in verse 11, the seed is the Word of God. It is the sower's greatest blessing. He may spread it with no fear of loss to himself. Whatever cost at the margins there may be from freely scattering the seed is absorbed by the seed which, though trampled in some places, choked in others, or even devoured, will still produce that which no farmer can hope to have without it.

So, it is with Jesus.

He was trampled, choked, and even devoured before a full flowering occurred. He is the Word, abused, ignored, and walked over. He is the Word given to us in unlimited promise. He is the Word the devil would snatch away, but a hundred thousand devils could never carry what Christ has given each of us.

We remember also that the power of salvation is not in our equipment or energy. It is not in the size of our silos or churches. It isn't guaranteed, nor are we etitled, because all our grand-dads were farmers or all our ancestors were Lutherans.

The bounty is the Seed.

The Seed of the Word gives the increase. Christ provides the harvest in dimensions beyond comprehension or measure. The price for man's salvation is a beyond ten-thousand fold because the price was paid for everyone. The yield is boundless, the harvest impossible to measure.

Every blessing and endowment of the Kingdom of God has been given to us in the Gospel. In Christ, God has given us all things. Through the Word we will never go wanting. To be so rich in His grace and blessed by His generosity, we will never need to wonder ---

---- what if?

Why? Because we know WHAT IS.