Seeds And Seedlings

While working with plants and flowers, growing some from seed and buying some of them, I have made some observations about life. Maybe I can compare the plants grown from seed to those purchased and grown as seedlings. And to compare them even further, I will use these plants as metaphors for the Christian life.

People who are fortunate enough to be grown with the seeds of the Gospel sown into their lives early are so blessed. Perhaps they have never known what it is like to be on "the search", the quest for meaning in their lives. I have no idea how it would be to come to the blessed knowledge of Christ and come into a relationship with Him at an early age. For me, the Christian life, as I first understood it, was nothing but hard work and striving toward unattainable perfection.

I guess I was one of the older seedlings brought into my Father's garden. When I was first planted into the soil of the Gospel, I was already 30 years old. I know how difficult the search for direction and meaning in life can be. I never realized meaning and purpose could be in the person of Christ and a relationship with Him. I thought working hard at doing good works would give my life meaning. I hoped at best to be useful to God, and at least to earn a little favor in His sight. That was the best I could hope for. My motives were far from perfect, they were actually an attempt to manipulate the Most High!

Burnout was soon on the horizon for my new found Christian life. I actually got the whole concept backwards. I really could bring nothing to God, I had nothing to give but my own self.
Here is the way it is, God gave His Son so that whosoever (that would be me) could have eternal life through faith in Him. Even the very faith I profess isn't mine, but it is the gift of God, so I cannot boast about it at all.

Can a seed tell itself to grow? Can a small tree tell itself to become taller? Of course not! So it really depends on who the gardener is in the garden as to how much you, as a seed or plant, actually grow. You just have to yield, cooperate. The proof of your relationship with Christ will be the fruit. The work you do will come from your connection to the living LORD. It will be an outpouring of your love, a response to Him, not a means to manipulate or earn His love. You already have that!

So here we are growing, I hope. Thriving and being nourished by the Divine Gardener, we bear fruit that shows we are rooted deeply in the truth of the Gospel. Doma