A boy sits in his science class one day, and listens intently as his teacher holds up an apple seed between her thumb and index finger, showing it to the whole class as she explains how that single seed, if planted and cared for, could grow into an apple tree which could bear fruit for many years. “Literally thousands of apples” she explains, “could grow from just this one, single seed.” She goes on to explain how the meat of the apple is actually perfect fertilizer for the seeds as they begin the transformation from seed to plant.
This thought stays with him throughout the day. You see, he really likes apples. In fact, they’re his favorite fruit. He decides he’s going to plant an apple tree of his own, right in his own back yard. He runs home after school and opens the refrigerator. “Hmmm……..Just one apple left.” He says to himself with a sense of disappointment. After all, if there’s just one left, he can’t eat it and plant it at the same time.
He decides to act on the faith that what his teacher said was true. He grabs a shovel out of his garage, then walks out into his back yard with the apple in hand. He finds a safe place to plant it, away from the main traffic areas, and digs a hole big enough for the apple to fit. He covers it with soil, clears the grass and weeds away, then brings the garden hose over and waters it.
For the rest of the summer, he walks out to where he buried his apple and looks for any sign of growth. He see’s nothing on the surface, but he waters it anyway. The winter comes, and the ground remains covered with snow for most of the season. He looks out the window from time to time, hoping that it’s ok.
The following Spring, after the ground had thawed, he walks over to where he planted it. His heart begins to pound as he notices a small sprout coming out of the ground. He begins to tell all of his friends about this sprout that will someday be an apple tree, and one which will supply him with all the apples he would ever need.
They laugh and begin mocking him, saying that he was nuts to wait for a tree to grow to get apples. After all, he could find all the apples he could want at the grocery store. They tell him to forget about his stupid ole tree and just go buy some. But in his heart, he knows that these apples would be different. After all, they would be his apples, grown from just a small seed that he had planted.
The following summer was extremely tumultuous. Wave after wave of violent thunderstorms pounded his small town. The following summer brought on a severe drought. He began to wonder if maybe God didn’t want his small tree to survive, and at times, he doubted it would.
What he couldn’t see was what the inclement weather was doing to his little tree underneath the surface. It wasn’t killing it. It was instead driving it’s roots deeper into the soil, giving it a firm foundation from which it could grow even taller and stronger than it would normally have grown.
After many years had passed, the boy was a young man with a small family of his own. He had bought his childhood home from his parents, and was living there with his own children.
As he relaxed in a hammock under his apple tree, reading a story to his daughter about seeds and plants, he looked up and realized that this tree had given him far more than just apples. It had given him shade from the hot summer sun. In the Fall, he would see the beauty of it’s leaves as they changed color. Every Spring, it would burst to life with beautiful flowers.
That’s exactly how God works with the fruit we plant in our lives.
We plant a seed, in faith that it will grow. At times we’re mocked by friends or relatives who don’t see the value of the seeds we are planting. We can’t blame them. After all, our seeds are not theirs. We see the storms that God sends into our lives and at times we begin to wonder if He’s trying to destroy what we’ve planted because we can’t see beneath the surface where the roots are reaching downward, giving us a firmer foundation.
What we also can’t see is what God will grow that into over time. We think we’ll just get apples, if He chooses to bless us with them. We have no way of knowing what beauty we’ll eventually see as the leaves change and the flowers bloom. We also can’t imagine the comfort we’ll eventually find in the shade of that which we’ve nurtured.
In Galatians 6:7-11, Jesus said;
“ Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.”
With every word we say, in everything we do, we are sowing seeds of one kind or another. The questions will always be; “What do we wish to find within our harvest?”
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