Even Unto Death: The Spiritual Armory of the Evangelical Lutheran Church Chapter 1

1. A Slow Poison and a Precious Antidote
“What kind of gift can kill you?” That was one of the riddles my father employed to teach me a little German and a big spiritual truth. While I readily accepted the challenge of his riddles, on occasion I had to admit that I could not solve one, and that was certainly true in this case: “What kind of gift can kill you?” Yet my father never simply gave me the answer to his riddles, and this was no exception. He reminded me that Jesus often spoke in parables and specifically pointed to the Parable of the Sower, in which Jesus explained what the seed sown by the wayside represented: “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart” (Mt 13:19).2