Several years ago an acquaintance from high school ran across my name in a directory when we both lived in Eugene. She called and asked if we could meet for lunch. We had no classes together in high school. Our connection came from riding the bus from home to school and back every day. Now, 30 years later, we both ended up in the same town 1500 miles from where we grew up. Near the end of our first lunch date after all those years, my friend suddenly became very serious and told me how significant those bus-ride conversations had been for her.
Her home life was abusive and chaotic, and I was the only person she had to talk to, she told me, the one person she confided in. I hadn’t known this. We were just 15 or 16 at the time. One day in particular stood out in her memory. That was the day she decided she couldn’t go on. As she shared her pain and despair on the ride home from school, I said something she still remembered all these years later. It got her through the ordeal at home, she said, until she was finally able to leave and go out on her own. “You saved my life,” she told me. “I’m here now because of what you said that day.” I didn’t remember the conversation at all or anything about the day. Clearly, though, it had meant everything to her.
SEEDS.
Within a year or so of meeting up with that high school acquaintance, I was on my way to a meeting on the U of O campus but was having trouble finding the building. A grounds-keeping vehicle was approaching me on the path and I hailed the driver, hoping to get some information. The person stopped, looked at me, and began berating me for something I’d said to her, with the best of intentions, several years before. She was still angry after all these years and let me have it as I stood there dumbfounded. I had no idea what she was talking about. I didn’t remember her or the conversation, but she did, and it clearly had a huge negative impact on her. I walked away in shock, feeling disoriented and confused. I couldn’t come up with any memory threads to connect the dots and it troubled me for days.
SEEDS.
We sow them willy-nilly throughout our lives. Sometimes we are aware of the seeds we’re planting, as when hoping to teach or influence our children or the direction of a discussion. But even more often, I imagine, we are unaware that we have been sowing seeds throughout the day—seeds of kindness and hope, or maybe seeds of fear and despair. We are like the sower in Mark’s Gospel scattering seeds on the ground, going to bed and getting up day after day. The seeds sprout and grow without our knowing how it happens, or even, sometimes, knowing THAT it is happening at all.
We share our thoughts and feelings with the world. We share our needs, desires, fears and insights as we live our complicated lives. We communicate our experiences to the people around us, and that very communication is a SEED. Without even being aware, we sow these very real seeds everywhere we go.
Paul says “we walk by faith, not by sight.” We actually SEE very little of what’s happening as we sow the seeds of our words and actions each day. The seeds fall where they may and mysteriously interact with the soil on which they fall. Some have long-term, even life-long effects, as in the stories I’ve just shared with you. Some never germinate at all. But for those that do, Paul tells us, “God gives the growth and insures the harvest.” That harvest is a wonder in itself.
I benefited from hearing the story of my high school classmate, but the grounds-keeper also taught me an important lesson about the boundary between my experience of reality and the equally valid, but totally opposite experience of someone else. I trust she gained something from the opportunity to read me the riot act! I certainly did. It is as though God takes a tender shoot from the very best part of the developing mustard shrub or the topmost branches of the growing cedar, and nurtures an outcome to benefit both the sower and the receiver of the seed.
Paul says as much in his letter to the Romans: “For those who love God, all things work together for good.” But, he also tells the Corinthians that “we need to make the most of our lives on this earth.” We can have absolute confidence that God is working inside all the seeds we sow in ways we will never be able to see or understand—bringing about outcomes that strengthen and enlighten all parties concerned. But our own spiritual development requires that we also pay attention to what is growing from the seeds we sow, and that we become ever-more intentional about what we cultivate and what we dig out of the garden.
Pruning has become one of my favorite summer activities. I find it restful and soul-satisfying to dead-head my roses and clip the suckers from my fruit trees. I’m constantly going after the low-hanging water spouts on the apple trees and the always-intrusive blackberry vines. In the same way I’m learning to prune language that triggers anxiety in others, attitudes that are negative or judgmental, habits that interfere with communication, and prejudices that are sometimes obvious and other times so subtle I am caught off-guard when they appear.
In all of this I have confidence in a God who brings low the tall tree and makes the withered tree bloom. I take responsibility for noticing what I’m sowing and for making changes in what I choose to plant each day. But I also trust God will insure an abundant harvest that will feed and nurture the good in everyone. Because that’s what love does, and that’s who and what God is.
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