Seeds don’t need very much. Good soil, moisture, and sunshine will do just fine. Tiny miracles built to do one thing, and to do that one thing well. They’ve been practicing their earthen dance for the longest time.
On a South Carolina summer day, I was the little kid who tore into the fresh cut watermelon like it was a Christmas present. Billy, my sweet maternal grandfather, theatrically spoke, “Whoa son…are you swallowing any seeds?” Grinning, I nodded my wet, red face. “Oh goodness…”, he said in a sing song voice, “in a few days, they’ll start to sprout, and come right out of your ears!” I froze, mid chew, with eyes as big as my appetite. His broad smile broke through, followed by a laugh that I can still hear. Thus began my fondness for seeds, and their mysterious capacity to burst forth.
As creatures of clay, made from dirt and the Great Farmer’s shaping hands, we all came to join in the co-creative dance. In a wild evolutionary leap, our ancestors harnessed the power of seeds, becoming farmers themselves, more than ten thousand years ago. We could then settle in one place, sink down roots, plant what we needed, and grow. All seeds given freely from the golden grace of God’s garden. They have always held within them the shape of the earth, and of us.
The wayfaring rabbi loves telling stories –truth dressed up as ordinary folks and things.* He plants an image of the Kingdom of God into their fertile ground. It was a story that every ear could hear. Someone casts a seed to the ground, and then leaves it be. Never thinking twice. And yet it’s the power within this Life that cracks and weaves through the soil, bursting forth as a little green shoot, soon maturing to bear what is needed to bake our bread, or hold our nests. A harvest and a home.
We are all walking around, hearts and pockets splitting at the seams with seeds of every kind. These seeds that are your life weren’t meant for you to hold onto. There is great agency within what is cast, and who casts it. Turn loose of them. In this, you are both seed and sower. It is then, and only then, that Life can keep coming. And coming. And coming….
—Jim Marsh, Jr., Bread of Life Church
