Submitted by Pastor David Wynn, Tarkio Christian Church

Jesus turned to the farmers of his day and said, “Don’t you see what the Kingdom of heaven is all about?” It’s like when you plant a seed, and when you leave it there, and you watch it, and it doesn’t happen quickly, doesn’t happen overnight, but in due time . . . it sprouts. Someone waters, someone cultivates, someone takes the harvest, and the miracle of that seed turns into a beautiful plant. And it turns into new life.

And then Jesus said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a little mustard seed. If you have the hope of the mustard seed, the Kingdom of Heaven is yours.” What’s Jesus saying here? The answer is, I believe, so obvious: You can’t push the seed, you can’t make it do what it’s not supposed to do. Oh, you may fertilize it to help it along, but the seed is going to do what the seed is going to do. And it’s going to do it at the right time.

Maybe hope is like that.  You hang on by a thin thread of hope in the darkness of night. You hang on in the struggle of your decisions for what you know is right. You have to stand for something in life, or you’ll fall for anything.

The point of the parable may be this: Growth is hard to see. Growth is almost unperceivable. One day you’ll come out to see the miracle of the sprout as it cracks through the soil. Kind of like God’s surprises in our lives. We most often miss God’s surprises, because we want things to happen now, we want our lives changed immediately. We want the seeds that we have invested to sprout today, in our time.

But God says, “Everything in its own time.” Everything at the right time.  Everything by a plan. Growth is almost unperceivable. You can watch it, and you might miss it. But it’s when you trust it and you go away and come back that you see it. Oh yeah! It’s happening! I didn’t even see it, but it’s taking place! And then we perceive that growth is constant, and will always be with us.

You catch what I’m saying? You know the feeling. Growth is constant and it changes a part of our lives. It constantly evolves, and changes, and unless we box it off, constrict it, it will always be a part of our lives. So, how does this relate to us?

Well, Jesus says that someone is going to plant those seeds, and they’re going to trust those seeds to be there and to grow. Someone else will probably come along and water that seed. It may not be you, it may be someone else. Someone else will come along and help and guide that seed by cultivating around it and keeping the bad seeds away from it. And someone else will probably come along to take the harvest and enjoy the fruit of someone else’s labors.

Look quickly on how that relates . . . to ministers. I firmly believe that I will not see the results of the changes I have been witnessing in people’s lives today.  One of the sadnesses of my life is to know that I will not see the results of what happens in the changes that God works in your life. You know, maybe we have seeds that have been inside us for a long time. We’ve been afraid to plant, afraid to water, afraid to cultivate, or to let anybody know that God has placed this spark of potential within us.

What is your seed, what is your gift, what is your talent inside you that is just waiting to break forth? Often I have heard it said that people in the world today have lost hope. We let despair close in around us with our struggles, we let the pressures of our society close in on us. We let our anxieties of the night wipe us out, and we’re scared, when what we really need to do is let God have the seed that has been placed within us and let it be watered and cultivated and hang on to the hope that brings us the Kingdom of Heaven.

What seed is inside of you today that needs to be nurtured, to be set free? Maybe we should just let go and risk it, and wonder what God could do in our lives? Let God say, give me your seed, and let’s see what we can do, together. I wonder . . . I just wonder . . . I just wonder.