S is for SEEDS

My dad had a vegetable garden that you could reach along a narrow path from our house. The path was little more than a strip of grass, no more than two feet wide, that had been mown during the weekly lawn cutting exercise and so allowed easy access across a patch of part orchard, part scrub land that stretched to the boundary of the homestead. As soon as the longer nights began to appear, he could be found on many evenings, toiling away with a spade and grape, breaking up the soil from the previous year, adding some farmyard manure and eventually producing ten or twelve long drills into which a variety of seeds would be sown. Thus, by the time of the longest day, we were already sampling such delights as beans, peas, lettuce, scallions, cabbages and a few other miscellaneous vegetables that seemed to appear overnight but actually took months of preparation and care to produce. Maybe it just appeared that way because I didn't visit the garden too often!

And maybe that whole picture was somewhere in the back of my mind when the longer spring nights heralded a new growing season this year and my mind turned to all things green and edible that might be grown in the comforting and immediate locality of our back yard. And so it was, armed with a few seed trays, some small bags of compost and a bundled pack of assorted seeds that the whole growing process began to reenact the history of my childhood. You know I've always wondered why garden centres sell bundled packs of seeds that altogether cost less than the price of a single packet. It's like buying a value pack in a supermarket but I can't help thinking that there must be something wrong with the seeds to sell them so cheaply. Maybe they won't germinate or maybe it's just a ploy to get more people interested in growing plants. Anyhow, after several days in the warmth of a conservatory, the green shoots appearing proved that I need not have worried and soon it was time to transplant into containers that could cope with the future extensive root systems that had been planned. And so it went on, beginning with chives, lettuce, tomatoes, beetroot and even cucumber seeds and a couple of small 'plastic' mini greenhouses, I watched enthralled, as the little seeds I planted in April began to emerge into fully grown plants that by now are several feet tall in the case of the tomatoes and cucumbers and some, such as lettuce and chives have already made it into the summer salads. Just a few weeks ago small tomatoes began to emerge from the remains of the flowers and more recently a fairly large cucumber is rapidly taking over one of the mini greenhouses and just pleading to be eaten. Indeed the whole back paved areas is awash with green colour and edible plants providing a nice contrast to the many pots of colourful flowers that wife spreads around the outskirts of the homestead. And all produced from a few packets of seeds.

It's at times like this that I'm humbled by the Creator and His magnificent creation, His planning on how it all fits together and His infinite intelligence that creates a myriad of different plants from tiny seeds, some of which we can eat and others which just bring a dash of colour to our lives. And I'm humbled that amidst all this creation that I can see, He also created me and gave me the ability to think, talk and appreciate who He is and what He has done. But I'm also reminded of the great commission to tell the world of the Gospel, to 'sow the seed' and the responsibility that falls on every believer's head to spread that seed. How often I have failed to take opportunities to further the Master's kingdom and sometimes maybe i just didn't think the seed was precious enough. But when you realise that the seed you sow can give life for ever it sort of helps you to prioritise your life and everything else seems so much less important.

You know I've made mistakes in my gardening career. Sometimes I didn't read the instructions properly, sometimes I forgot to water, other times I watered too much but almost always the seeds germinated anyway. And you see, it is God who brings the harvest, not us, but above all we must, even in our imperfections be obedient and faithful and sow the seed.

Just a word of warning if the seed has already been sown in your heart. This year I planted some lettuce seedlings in a old length of spouting. Initially they grew well but within a few days they were all gone, courtesy of the greedy mouths of rabbits and birds. Jesus told a parable about such seed being sown in different places in Matthew 13 with varying degrees of success. Let me ask you, what is it that stops the seed growing in your life?