Watch Them Grow!
By Doug Bing, Washington Conference president
Planting seeds is a favorite past time of mine.
I like reading about different plants, how they grow, what they produce and what type of care they require.
Of course, you’ll find tons of information about different plants on the internet. It can be overwhelming at times but is very interesting.
However, no matter how much you read about plants, it really is up to the seed to do the growing. You can learn all you want and do everything you think you are supposed to do. However, it is the seed that does the real miracle work of growing.
(Maybe you are particularly seeing this result with your under- or over-producing garden right now!)
Mark 4 has two seed examples.
The first is the parable of the sower and the seed. In that parable the seed falls in four different places.
The only place where the seed really does its job as a seed is on the good ground.
In verse 8 we see the results: “. . . yielded a crop that sprang up, increased, and produced; some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred.”
So there we learn that good seed grows, increases and produces. Other seeds in the wrong places and the wrong times are unable to do what is expected when they were planted.
When we think about the Christian life, we see that Christians are to grow spiritually in their walk with God, and as that happens, they produce. Being involved by using your spiritual gifts you can increase and see the produce as the seed does its work.
There is another text also in Mark 4 that we also need to remember. Verse 26-28 states:
And He said, the kingdom of God is as a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. For the earth yields crops by itself, first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head.
Here you see another responsibility of the Christian. To faithfully sow the seed and let the seed do its work. We don’t know how the Holy Spirit fully works, but we can rest fully in the knowledge that God is working on the seed that is being scattered.