Luke 8:14

Are choked with cares— St. Luke expresses it thus, perhaps, to intimate the uneasy situation of the mind, while clogged and straitened with such incumbrances as these, and rendered utterly unfit to breathe and delight itself in celestial and eternal objects. Choking arises from something which straitens the gullet or wind-pipe, and so obstructs the passage of food or air; and thus young plants or corn may properly be said to be choked with thorns, which do not leave them room to grow; and the word, which otherwise by the power of the divine Spirit would exert its vital influences, is represented as choked, when thus oppressed with secular cares prevailing in the mind.