pine cones, seeds, and where we let go

When he was a kid, a buddy of mine went on a summer family vacation, driving halfway across the country. His younger brother picked up a conifer cone (fancy name for pine cone) from a roadside stop somewhere in South Dakota. When they got back home, his younger brother buried the pine cone in their yard, and eventually forgot about it.

In the springtime, a shoot of an evergreen shrub burst several feet out of the ground where his kid brother had buried that pine cone. It's not unusual, right? 

Yet the growth for sure astonished the family ... because it burst from the ground in the springtime ... nine YEARS after the family had returned from that trip.

Nine years. That's a decent stretch of time. Do you remember what you did, on this day, nine years ago? Unless you did something important, probably not. I sure don't. 

Jesus tells a story about someone who spreads seed to grow crops (Jesus later explains what the story means). I appreciate that this story incorporates growing seeds.

Growing from seed takes time. 

Growing from seed resists any allure of overnight success. 

It refuses to cooperate with our timelines; we have to work with its timelines. If you want decent crops in the fall, you gotta plant in the spring. No one plants in the late summer, to reap a harvest that fall.

But then again, there's only so much we can do. We can put the seed into the ground, but we can't force the seed to germinate. We must respect its timeline. We can't impose our own schedule onto it, of how and when we think it should grow.

Sometimes, when we try to help out others, we expect that once we provide help, we'll see some immediate changes. We become discouraged when we don't see it. Eventually, we stop checking the spot where we planted a seed.

Or, we focus that same expectation inward. We expect that once we learn of some better, more fruitful way to live life, we should be able to immediately apply it, and live differently about everything. We frustrate ourselves when we don't instantly show marvelous growth. We write ourselves off as a lost cause, or just slower than the rest.

Seeds take time. 

Repeat after me: seeds take time.

The grace-filled reality is that while you will forget about what seeds you helped plant with others, God doesn't forget. You'll forget about what was planted in your soil for good, but God will not. Growth requires seeds. Growing from seed takes time. It will not be hurried.

When you feel like you're in a hurry, or you're discouraged, remember this parable, and the time it takes to grow from seed. Ask God to help you adopt his rhythms of growth and grace.