Several years ago I received a pot of rust colored chrysanthemums as a gift. I enjoyed them for many days before they began to fade.
“Well that’s that,” I thought as I placed them on the outside workbench so Keith could salvage the dark green plastic pot for other uses. By the time he got to them, they were brown and withered, as dead looking as any plant I had ever seen.
Keith cannot stand to throw things away. “It might come in handy,” he always says as he pulls things out of the trash. That is why he stuck those dried out flowers in the ground beneath the dining room window. Yet even he was amazed when a few days later green leaves sprouted on those black stems. It was fall, a mum’s favorite season, and before long I had twice as many as I had started with.
Fast forward to Thanksgiving, a year later. I now had a bed full of rust colored mums about two feet square. The next year the bed was four feet wide and my amaryllises were swamped. Keith built a raised bed about eight feet square, half of it for the mums and the rest for a plumbago, a miniature rose, and a blue sage. That has lasted exactly one year. The plumbago, rose, and sage have been evicted by the mums and need a new home.
What started as one six inch pot of mums, withered and brown, has become 64 square feet of blooms so thick they sprawl over the timbers of the raised bed into the field surrounding it. Whenever I cut an armful for a vase inside, you cannot even tell where I cut them.
We often fall prey to the defeatist attitude, “What can one person do?” Much to the delight of our Adversary we sit alone in the nursery pot, wither, and die. Yet the influence we have as Christians can spread through our families, our workplaces, our neighborhoods, and our communities. The good deeds we do, the moral character we show, the words we do—and don’t—say make an impression on others. Those are the seeds we plant, never giving in to the notion that one person cannot accomplish anything. The attitudes we show when mistreated and the peace with which we face life’s trials will make others ask, “Why? Can I have this too? How?”
Plant a seed every chance you get. If a six inch pot of dried up mums can spread so quickly, just think what the living Word of God shown through your life can accomplish.
And he said, How shall we liken the kingdom of God? Or in what parable shall we set it forth? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown upon the earth, though it be less than all the seeds that are upon the earth, yet when it is sown, grows up, and becomes greater than all the herbs, and puts out great branches, so that the birds of the heaven can lodge under the shadow thereof, Mark 4:30-32.
Dene Ward
“Well that’s that,” I thought as I placed them on the outside workbench so Keith could salvage the dark green plastic pot for other uses. By the time he got to them, they were brown and withered, as dead looking as any plant I had ever seen.
Keith cannot stand to throw things away. “It might come in handy,” he always says as he pulls things out of the trash. That is why he stuck those dried out flowers in the ground beneath the dining room window. Yet even he was amazed when a few days later green leaves sprouted on those black stems. It was fall, a mum’s favorite season, and before long I had twice as many as I had started with.
Fast forward to Thanksgiving, a year later. I now had a bed full of rust colored mums about two feet square. The next year the bed was four feet wide and my amaryllises were swamped. Keith built a raised bed about eight feet square, half of it for the mums and the rest for a plumbago, a miniature rose, and a blue sage. That has lasted exactly one year. The plumbago, rose, and sage have been evicted by the mums and need a new home.
What started as one six inch pot of mums, withered and brown, has become 64 square feet of blooms so thick they sprawl over the timbers of the raised bed into the field surrounding it. Whenever I cut an armful for a vase inside, you cannot even tell where I cut them.
We often fall prey to the defeatist attitude, “What can one person do?” Much to the delight of our Adversary we sit alone in the nursery pot, wither, and die. Yet the influence we have as Christians can spread through our families, our workplaces, our neighborhoods, and our communities. The good deeds we do, the moral character we show, the words we do—and don’t—say make an impression on others. Those are the seeds we plant, never giving in to the notion that one person cannot accomplish anything. The attitudes we show when mistreated and the peace with which we face life’s trials will make others ask, “Why? Can I have this too? How?”
Plant a seed every chance you get. If a six inch pot of dried up mums can spread so quickly, just think what the living Word of God shown through your life can accomplish.
And he said, How shall we liken the kingdom of God? Or in what parable shall we set it forth? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown upon the earth, though it be less than all the seeds that are upon the earth, yet when it is sown, grows up, and becomes greater than all the herbs, and puts out great branches, so that the birds of the heaven can lodge under the shadow thereof, Mark 4:30-32.
Dene Ward
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