Seeds, stakes, and nurturing yield a rich harvest of tomatoes. They can also yield a rich harvest in lives when planted by words in hearts.
WORDS ~ They’ve been on my mind a lot lately. I heard a few powerful, provocative statements that got me once again pondering their impact.
Words as seeds, words as investment, words like a stake in the ground that we shove into the earth, stake our claim and say “Upon THIS belief I plant myself.” Then like the center pole of a merry-go-round, we proceed to live out our moments, our days, and our decisions around that principle.
Robin W. Pearson is a mom and fellow author. She homeschools her 7 children. (I’m imagining Laura Ingalls Wilder’s one-room schoolhouse.) Recently Robin wrote about listening to an educational show on the mysteries of the Bible where “scholars, theologians, and experts” basically contradicted much of Scripture in “authoritative” voices. Robin pondered the impact of such scholars on children, asking, “How might they influence those tender hearts while they’re busy steering their seeking minds?”
Legitimate concern about the types of seeds planted.
Another vignette: After years of answering “Why…?” questions, instruction on living by God’s priorities, and modeling God’s empowering despite one’s feelings, a parent receives a gift of simple words strung together, “Where do you think I learned that? … From you!”
Or one’s heart fills with hope for the future hearing, “Next time we come here, we should …”
Bountiful harvest of seeds planted.
Condoleezza Rice recently shared a story that demonstrates the planting of seeds. She grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. One election day, she and her father were driving and discussing the candidates and election results. Referring to George Wallace, she said “Surely we aren’t going to elect a segregationist like that.”
Her dad said that it appeared Wallace would be elected.
As they passed a line of blacks waiting to enter a polling place and vote, she asked, “Then why do those people even bother?”
“Because they know someday their vote will count.”
Powerful harvest shared.
Proverbs 25:11 equates well-spoken words to precious metals. What words have been seeds someone planted in your life? What words might be a stake for you?
Last week we talked about nature speaking of God and focused on redwood trees. Those magnificent giants live hundreds of years, grow hundreds of feet into the heavens, and have roots as shallow as 5 to 10 feet. But those relatively shallow roots stretch 60, 80, even 100 feet out and intertwine, sometimes even fuse, with the roots of neighbor redwoods. They literally hold each other up. What a perfect metaphor for us.
And like redwoods, most of us thrive in a supportive community. This should be no surprise, I guess. Jesus has commanded “Love one another as I have loved you” [John 15:12, KJV]. We’re even told why He chose to link humans together: Two are better than one, Because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, For he has no one to help him up. [Ecclesiastes 4:9-10, KJV]
Like the redwood’s roots, we reach out from where we are planted. There are countless ways in which we can be part of such a network of support ~ giver and receiver. And like the myriad, intermingled roots, each of them is important and amplifies the others.