THE HIDDEN SEED

                For several years I have planted a small vegetable garden outside my kitchen door.  It has never been a big garden; actually it was very small and would hold only a few rows of vegetables that my family liked as well as those vegetables that would grow well in a hot, dry climate: corn, beans, turnips, squash etc. . . .  Over the years as the children left one by one the garden became even smaller and when Frank passed on to his heavenly home, the garden became non-existent.

            Then, after several years of lying dormant, I wanted to see something green growing in that little garden spot again so I bought seed and we began to cultivate the soil and prepare it for growing something once again.  We planted carrots, zucchini squash and Swiss chard.  I loved watching the green sprouts as they began to break through the soil and reach upward toward the sun and the water it needed to grow.  I have always enjoyed watching plants grow and see them change from a small seed that is practically invisible to something that breaks through from the darkness of the soil and turns into a large, healthy plant that produces fruit or flowers.

            This particular year as we watched the plants come forth, something unusual began to happen.  Plants were coming up that we had not planted!  They were vegetable plants, not weeds, and we couldn´t understand where they had come from.

            How had such a thing happened?  In spite of the fact that we hadn´t planted that garden spot in almost five years and we hadn´t planted those particular seeds that year, on one side of the garden there was a big beautiful butternut squash plant blooming and producing fruit.  On the other side of the garden there was a turnip that had spring up in the middle of the chard and the turnip was doing better than the chard.  But we hadn´t planted that squash or the turnip.    Yet, there they were, growing and producing like they were right at home!

            As I pondered where those plants had come from, I remembered that five years earlier we had planted turnips and squash in that garden.  Was it possible that these plants were a result of those seed we had planted five years earlier?  Or was it possible that one seed had fallen from the plants that had grown all those years ago and had lain dormant in the soil until we cultivated it again and the seed received the water and the sun it needed to grow?

            I believe that is what happened and it was a tremendous spiritual lesson to me.  How many times do we plant the “seed” of the Word of God in the lives of people and we feel there is no fruit because WE don´t see it?  How many times do we quit planting the “seed” because we feel it has fallen on rocky soil and that it will not bring forth the fruit we desire?  The seed that was in my garden lay dormant for five years before it finally came forth.

Isaiah 55.10-11 “For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater, So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”

            Sooner or later the seed we sow, whether it be good seed or bad seed (yes, some of us even sow bad seed) it will one day come forth and bring forth its corresponding harvest.  Whether we see the fruit or not, we need to continue planting good seed, knowing for certain that God will bring forth His fruit in due season.  Someday there will be a harvest of all the seed we´ve planted and we will see seed that we have forgotten about and thought had been wasted, bring forth the fruit of a beautiful harvest in the life of the person where it had been planted. 

           Seed only has one purpose. It is not used to decorate or for many other tasks. the only purpose seed has is to reproduce that from which it came. Maybe we should examine the seed we´re sowing for surely one day there will be a harvest.

                                                                          

                                                                                     Nola Warren