A few months ago, I watched 64 young men and women walk across the stage at The Amazima School in Jinja, Uganda. Most of these were students I had known since childhood – four, five and six year olds that had held my hand on dusty red dirt roads eager to tell me about their days.
While I often perceived them as lacking, many of them coming from tremendous material poverty, they were rich in hope, bubbling with the excitement of possibility. Last month as I watched them graduate from high school, beaming at the proud applause of their parents and guardians, I began thinking about the seeds we sow with our lives.
Some seeds are sown intentionally, but often, I am not even conscious of the harvest my words, actions or choices might lead to decades later. As I stood in the back of the chapel with. My arms raised in worship on graduation day, though, I just kept thinking, “seeds matter.”
My now-eight-year-old son and I plant a garden together every spring. What is a little funny about this is that we also spend most of June and July in Uganda. Before we leave for the summer, we instruct our friends and neighbors to please pick anything they can use out of the garden.
It probably seems funny to some – why plant a garden if you are going to be gone for the entirety of the harvest season?
While I do love getting to bite into the juicy, july-ripened tomatoes when we get back from our trip, I don’t really plant the seeds just for the fruit. I plant them because I like the ritual. I love that this is something my little buddy gets excited to do with me every year and I soak up every minute we get together. We draw out the garden beds and plan the different fruits, vegetables and herbs we will plant in each one. We go to the store together and pick out seeds. We carefully plant them in starter trays or plastic cups, checking each morning for little green shoots unfurling. And then, once they seem hearty enough, we tenderly and intentionally place them into their beds.
We run out each morning before the heat of the day to water them, eyes peeled for the first sign of flowers or fruit. I like the rhythm of the garden, the way it makes us get outside, the way it makes us slow and get our hands dirty.
For me, the garden is about so much more than the harvest, it is about the process of planting the seeds. It’s about being together, with my little guy and with God, while we dig our fingers into the dirt. And it’s about trust. Because yes, I will plant and yes, I will water, but then I will go out of town and hope that maybe there is some fruit when we return.
As we step into a new year, life doesn’t feel too dissimilar from my gardening experience.
Every day, we get to choose which seeds we sow. We sow seeds with our thoughts, with our words, and with our choices. And. I want to be intentional about what I am putting my attention on, what I am allowing to take up space in my mind and heart, and what is coming out of my mouth. I want to be intentional about what is spilling out of my life and into the lives of those around me.
Each of these choices is a tiny seed. We may one day see the fruit of the choices we are making now, or we may not. We plant seeds in faith anyway, because we trust Our Good Gardener. This is our manifesto of trust – we plant the seeds and we water them. We declare with our lives that we trust God to bring about His fruit in His timing.
As a young mother, I clung to these words from Isaiah 55, “As the rain and the snow come down from Heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so is the word that goes out from my mouth: it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”
We can sow seeds of His Word with great confidence. In our own lives and in the lives of others. We can trust that God who gave us His Word will cause growth in us and in those around us as we keep faithfully planting in obedience to Him.
What seeds do you want to sow this month, this week, today?
What do you want to pay attention to?
What rhythms could you begin to develop that would help with intentionality in this area?
Dear one, God who gives seed to the sower and bread for food will supply your every need as you plant, as you water, as you wait.
For more:
Luke 8:1-15
2 Corinthians 9:8-11
Isaiah 55
