Back in early March when snow still blanketed my garden, I planted poppies. Poppy seeds (yes, the same ones you see on bagels or dinner rolls) are tiny (see photo). And they need a blast of cold to germinate. So you sow them on the frozen ground or even on top of the snow. It’s now four months later and my poppies are blooming: pink puffballs the size of my fist on stalks two feet tall. (see photo) Every year I’m amazed by how God packs the ingredients for such a flamboyant flower into a seed smaller than the head of a pin.
I also planted radishes and peas from seed, but not until May. Within a month, those tiny seeds became bright pink radishes peeking out of the dirt and fresh pea pods hanging from climbing vines ready for the salad bowl.
One of the most gratifying rewards of gardening is seeing things that you’ve planted as seeds begin to grow and bloom. Each seed has its own timetable, its own pattern of growth. And while you can plant, the final result requires a kind of letting go.
Likewise, one of the most gratifying rewards of ministry is seeing the seeds of truth you’ve planted in young lives begin to bear fruit. But here’s the thing—you cannot go out and buy the seeds for spiritual growth or order them from a garden catalog.
So where do we find the seeds to plant in the young hearts that have been entrusted to us? Where do we find living water to nourish them?
Jesus once told a parable about planting seeds and he said that the seed that produced the biggest harvest was the one that fell on good soil. And what did the seed represent in that parable? “But the seed falling on good soil refers to people who hear the word and understand it. They produce a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown” (Matthew 13:23 TNIV).
The kind of understanding Jesus is talking about is not just a detached, intellectual mastery of theory on what the Word says, but rather a connection between truth and action. This type of understanding results in life change.
Here’s what I know: you can’t give away what you don’t have. You can’t expect to help others grow if you are not tending your own soul. Leaders must receive from God what we give to those we lead. How? By taking time to simply be with God, to pray. To read Scripture simply as a love letter from your heavenly father, not just as prep for next week’s lesson. As Jesus said, you have to hear the word and you have to understand it—which means doing what it says. Living with integrity is a part of living out your understanding of God’s word.
Planting seeds requires great faith—whether in a garden or in a classroom. But all the faith in the world won’t make a seed become a plant. You have to actually put the seed into the ground rather than leave it in the packet on the shelf. It needs water, and tending—maybe from you, maybe from someone else. And then—and this is perhaps the hardest part—you have to trust the miracle of growth which is ultimately up to God. One way to tend your own soul, to bolster your own faith, is to let go and trust that God will bring fruit from what you’ve planted.
The Apostle Paul understood this. He wrote to the church at Corinth: “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor” (1 Corinthians 3:6-8).
Plant seeds, water them, and nurture the souls in your care—including your own. God will make things grow.
Keri Wyatt Kent is an author and speaker. She is the author of six books, including Rest: Living in Sabbath Simplicity. Learn more at www.SabbathSimplicity.com
