Although the smallest of all the seeds, it eventually grows into the greatest of garden plants, becoming a tree for birds to come and build their nests in its branches. Matt 13:32 (TPT)

Our Seeds – The Seed Series – Part 4

Go to PART 1  |  PART 2  |  PART 3  |  PART 4  |  PART 5  |  PART 6  |  PART 7

For a seeds potential to be actualized, it has to be planted. Buried.

At some point in our lives, our dreams, hopes, visions and goals must be put into action. We must sow them out of our hearts, with our hands and into the world. Otherwise, they only stay dreams, hopes, visions, and goals. They remain seeds sitting in a jar, full of potential but not doing much.

Perhaps many of us have kept our seeds – talents and gifts and ideas and unique selves – hidden, untried and untested, small and passive, away from the world, for fear of failure, ridicule, and separation. The soil is an unknown quantity. So we keep our seeds safe. But when they are safe, they are also dormant.

Jesus told his disciples not long before his death, “The person who loves his life and pampers himself will miss true life! But the one who detaches his life from this world and abandons himself to me, will find true life and enjoy it forever!”

He didn’t mean that we should hate our life and this world, and we should think nothing of them. He's not calling us to abandon our loves and passions and desires to follow a narrow and punitive religion. He was addressing complacency, and the tension of fear versus curiosity; isolation versus belonging; pride versus generosity; withholding versus wonder.

When we keep what we’ve been given to ourselves; when we put our seed on the top shelf and look at it every day and remark about how pretty and wonderful it is, day by day it’s potential wanes. The gold within in it remains hidden. But when we have the courage to take that seed, step out in faith, walk through our fear and release our gifts into the world and others with humility and vulnerability – plant our seeds into the soil – abandoning our gift to its growth; we begin to find real life.

There are levels of uncertainty and elements of risk to planting seeds. We can’t see what happens underneath the surface. To a point, we have little control over how the seed will be received, when it will grow, and how much it will grow. But faith tells us that we must plant it.

Every seed contains life.

We cannot manufacture our own transformation. We cannot keep ourselves hidden away and somehow conjure up a life well lived, a life of growth. We have to give ourselves to the process, step through fear and into faith and plant our seeds, giving way to the mystery of life, growth, and connection.

Helen Keller said, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

What is your seed? What makes life spark within you? What is it that you’re scared to reveal about yourself for fear of failure, or even, for fear of success? What is it that you have that could bring healing to those around you? Flavour and sustenance? Don’t hide that away in a jar, do the work and let that baby bloom!

But, for it to bloom, it must first be buried. It has to endure the darkness and cold of the dirt. And you must have patience and wait while the soil does its work…

Over to you! Leave us a comment below.

Go to Part 5 – Growth »

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