Sowing Seed
For many years, Boston ferns hung in baskets along my front porch, from spring into fall. I enjoyed their graceful foliage spilling over the edges of their plastic containers. I watered them diligently, especially during the hottest part of summer, and they rewarded me with lush fronds that waved to me as I pulled into the drive at the end of each day. Then one summer, the ferns became infested with tiny caterpillars that quickly ravaged them, leaving behind containers of nothing but long skinny sticks. The same thing happened again the next year and the next. I graciously accepted defeat, and threw in the towel. When the next spring rolled around, I decided to forego the ferns.
In the years that followed, I adorned my porch with begonias and the much sturdier asparagus fern. Then, one spring about three years ago, I noticed a lone frond reaching up through the pine-covered bed that ran the length of the front porch. “That won’t last,” I thought and waited for the caterpillars to strip the tender blades. Instead, the plant thrived. Tucked behind the boxwoods, new fronds unfurled in the shadow of the plant’s gently fanning leaflets. Every once in a while, I gave it a drink from my watering can. Slowly but surely, this volunteer seedling defied my pessimistic expectations.
The next year, another fern sprouted, and another, and another. Year upon year the little fern has multiplied, amassing a line of stately offspring that grace my porch’s edge. The phenomenon fascinates me. Though it’s clear spores fell from the hanging baskets of summers past and took root in the ground below, it’s wondrous and a bit mysterious. The plants I strove to maintain perished only to have their seed spring unbidden from the earth.
“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
As believers in Christ, we carry seeds. Truth, hope, healing, and so many others. They are a byproduct of the Spirit that lives inside us. As we live out each day, we deposit seeds into others whether intentionally or unintentionally. Oftentimes, we look at our lives and get discouraged. The things we’ve done, seed we’ve sown, seem to have fallen by the wayside without accomplishing what we’d hoped. It was all for nothing.
“I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.”
If you’ve read my blog in the past, you know I love to garden. I’ve had plenty of trial and error when it comes to planting seeds. This year, I had many seeds that did not come up. I inspected the ground daily wondering why nothing had happened. How much longer would it be before I saw some sign of life? Soon spring would be gone, and the season of planting over. What on earth had I done wrong? There seemed to be no rhyme or reason as to which seeds grew and which ones didn’t. In the same beds where vegetable seed stubbornly refused to sprout, zinnias put forth a multitude of shoots.
When a seed goes into the ground, it contains the full potential for life. Though the seed itself dies, the embryo of life it holds remains alive waiting for the right conditions to grow. There beneath the soil and straw, in a dark hidden place, the seed waits. I plant and water, hope and pray, but I have no power to make a seed grow. That part is up to God. He watches over the seed we’ve sown, and somewhere out there, when the time is right the life they hold will emerge.
Have faith, friends, and keep on planting.
