‘Tis the season to plant seeds, garden seeds, love seeds, fun seeds, study seeds, health seeds, spirit seeds, all kinds of seeds. ‘Tis the season to celebrate the marvel of growth Ñ growth in our gardens, growth in our minds, growth in our bodies, growth in our emotions, growth in our spirits. We are celebrating the invisible system of growth that God has programmed into all creation.1 In this season gardens flourish, students graduate, couples take vows of matrimony, families enjoy vacations, and we marvel at the signs of God’s faithfulness. My text is: “A man scatters seeds ... the seeds sprout and grow ...” I want to share four things about the marvelous process we call growth:
- You cannot force growth.
- You can cooperate with growth.
- You can trust and believe in growth.
- You can celebrate growth.
I like the scene in the clever film, Oh, God!, where they were about to conclude that their mission to the world was a failure. Someone said, “We blew it!” But God, caricatured by the imperishable George Burns, quickly responded, “Oh, I don’t think so. You never know; a seed here, a seed there, something will catch hold and grow.”
Jesus did a “show and tell” lesson using the mustard seed. The mustard is a beautiful and aromatic shrub in the gardens of Palestine: it began with a tiny seed and grew to a height of about twelve feet, with very widespread branches. It exuded a pleasant aroma that anyone would welcome in the backyard. It was a nesting place for birds. And it produced an herb that had a variety of uses. The essence of Jesus’ message is this: we are in a dynamic world, a world of change and growth. Something is always happening here! And what is happening is exciting. Get on board and share in it. That is significantly different from the ever-so-popular gloom and doom theology in our culture.
Jesus addressed a community that was so immobilized by fear, hostility and negativity that they couldn’t see the genuine excitement. The secular community was divided. Shall we be loyal to Rome? Shall we be loyal to the nations of our origins? They were pluralistic, too. And the religious community fed upon the divisiveness this fear and hostility bred. The religious community fostered more fear because they kept telling the people the world was coming to an end. Doesn’t that sound familiar! Jesus made it clear that he was not a prophet of gloom and doom - feeding on the people’s misgivings and their pocketbooks - fostering fear. To the contrary, Jesus brought a message of hope to those who were immobilized by social, political, religious and international differences. They really did have problems. They were on the spot. The Romans were making siege on Jerusalem. The temple either was about to be, or already had been, destroyed. Could anyone be a winner in a situation like that? You’re a winner when you plant the seed of God’s love and truth, and watch it grow and blossom into lives that exude love and grace to all who meet you.
Now to the four points about how to make the marvel of growth work for you. Point one: You cannot force growth. The memory of the 1988 summer drought will stay with us a long time. The prior winter had left some dead spots in our lawn. Early I hired a young man to thatch the yard, prepare the dead spots with topsoil and sow grass seed. I paid him for a good job. I watered the spots but the grass didn’t grow. Why, I don’t know. Then watering was restricted, the spots grew larger, and the recovery took months and months. You cannot force growth. The same is true in education, growing up, preparing for a vocation, and growing in faith. I remember saying to an eleven-year-old one day, “Say, son, you’re growing up fast, aren’t you?” “Yes, I guess, Father, but not fast enough for me!” was his reply. Isn’t that what we all feel? It isn’t happening fast enough for me! I have heard people say, “If I could only have faith like John (or Elizabeth), I would feel I was a real Christian.” Growth in faith comes one step at a time.
Point Two: You can cooperate with growth. You can plant the seed. You can water the soil. You can fertilize the ground. You can provide the light and shade as needed. You can prune and control weeds. But the growth comes at its own pace. Students, candidates for marriage, career persons, retirees, gardeners, whoever you are, the secret is in developing a discipline that is consistent with your goals, resisting every temptation to take an easy way, and investing every ounce of energy you have. Sowing seeds of growth. When I stand in the backyard watering the flowers and the small garden, I look at the plants and wonder: How do they grow? What makes them so green, able to withstand the dry weather and hot sun? I know the water helps, but I also know there is something beyond my control that makes the plants really grow.
The same process works in the Christian life. We practice daily prayer and Bible reading. We find ways to be of service to others. We pledge money and time to the church and charitable purposes. We join the people of God at the altar regularly. These are some of the seeds that God uses to mold and shape our lives in love, peace and hope. But it happens at God’s own pace and as you are able to cooperate with him.
James A. Garfield, prior to serving as President of the United States, was president of Hiram College in Ohio. One day a father asked Garfield if there were a short-cut whereby his son could get through college in less than the usual four years. He wanted his Son to get on with making money. The college president gave this reply, “Of course there is a way; it all depends on what you want your boy to do. When God wants to grow an oak tree, he takes 100 years. When he wants to make a squash, he only takes two months.”2
When you want to maintain your health, you cooperate with your physician. When you want to be a good student, you cooperate with your instructor. When you want to be a Christian, you cooperate with God in the church community of your choice.
Point Three: You can trust the growth process. The hardest thing in the world for us to do is to trust that process. You may have heard about the boy who planted a seed and dug it up every day to see how it was doing. He couldn’t trust it to do its own thing. When I work with a couple getting ready for marriage, I tell them I can’t guarantee that their marriage will be successful. I can provide them with some basic guidelines that will help them invest themselves in the relationship. It is hoped, after many years of ups and downs, many celebrations and traumas, they will be able to declare that it has been a success. Trust will make it happen Ñ your spouse has faith in your love and you believe in your own commitment. That makes the marriage succeed.
Point Four: You can celebrate growth. A successful couple was invited to meet the high-school principal in his office. He advised them to let their son drop out of school. How would they ever celebrate being parents after a blow like that? The father was a successful lawyer, the mother an active club woman in the city. For years they had been despairing over their son’s poor report cards. They were not surprised, but they despaired, thinking their son would never amount to anything.
Nineteen years later, they sat in the gymnasium of a large university watching the same son receive an honorary degree. At age forty-two his income was in excess of $75,000. He worked for many years as a gas-station attendant. One day he came home and announced that he was going to finish high school and go to college. Here is how that young man explained such a complete turnabout in attitude and accomplishment: “Somehow, while I was washing a blue two-door, all the bits and pieces fell into place, and I was grown up.”3 You cannot force growth. You can cooperate with growth. You can trust growth. And you can celebrate growth.
Every parent remembers throwing the five-year-old child in the air, catching her, bouncing her off the knee. No sooner than she hits the floor she exclaims, “Do it again!” I believe it was Lord Chesterton who suggested that God gets that kind of excitement out of his work. Imagine God creating the first daisy and enjoying it so much that something down inside him exclaims, “Do it again!” And when he makes the second daisy, he is even more excited and shouts to himself, “Do it again!”
I believe I am created in God’s image. He has placed me in a marvelous world. It is exciting and wonderful to be alive. It is exciting when we graduate from one level of achievement to another. We are fortunate when we can get up each morning and go to our schools, offices, fields and factories as active participants in God’s wonderful, marvelous world.
The message of the Gospel is quite simple and direct. The church of Jesus Christ had a tiny beginning in the work of an obscure teacher and a pitifully small group of ordinary people. The church has become the greatest of all shrubs, the world-wide church that welcomes people of all races and nations into her folds, celebrating the marvel of growth.
Thank you, blessed Lord, for planting in our heads the thoughts of God, in our hearts the love of Jesus, and in our hands the deeds of gentle love and service.
1. Biologists claim each seed has eight interacting systems equivalent to DNA/RNA in humans.
2. The C.S.S. Publishing company, Inc., Lima, Ohio, Emphasis, June 1982, page 27.
3. Story told in Tony Compolo, Who Switched the Price Tags?