Seeds
by Stuart Malkin 17 August 2021
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What a beautiful time of year this is! Some would say the best has past, particularly in the garden or the wild of nature that is all around us. However, look at the shapes and colours that seem to go on and in one form or another. The amazing thing is that wild plants seem to have done better than for some time, and this is not for what we have endeavoured to do. The likes of foxgloves, red campion, yellow rattle, bluebells, ox eyed daisies and especially poppies are growing where we’ve certainly not set them. Of course the subject of poppies is not always a popular one because it’s relationship to opiates, but I think the funniest thing about that was hares apparently like them but got floppy on either the scent or the food. There actually 70 different varieties of poppy, most of which grow in the northern hemisphere including inside the arctic circle. Anyway, back to the garden variety, the beauty goes beyond the flowers, as when they are finished the pods house the seeds in readiness for what’s in the future.
Reading: Matthew Ch13 The parable of the sower
Jesus told them this parable
“Once there was a man who went out to sow corn. As he scattered the seed, some of it fell along the path and the birds came and ate it up. Some of it fell on rocky ground where there was little soil. The seeds soon sprouted, because the soil wasn’t deep. But when the sun came up, it burned the young plants; and because the roots had not grown deep enough, the plants soon dried up. Some of the seed fell among thorn bushes, which grew up and choked the plants. But some seeds fell in good soil, and the plants produced corn; some produced a hundred grains, others sixty and others thirty.”
The garden is full of colour and refreshing new shapes. The parable Jesus told was about corn, mainly because he was speaking to farmers and he wanted his listeners to understand, but that that is not the same in 2021. If you consider what happens to a poppy at the end of its life. How many seeds are there when it opens up, 10, 20, 100, it seems like 1000s.
It’s a little like the seeds of faith as we grow. But it always reminds me of what happened when a group of us went away on Christian week away and one of the youngsters was doing homework so he didn’t have to do it when he returned. What are you doing we asked, Social studies on the subject of DOUBT he replied. Many of us wondered what he wrote pre and post the week away. The subject of doubt and faith both old and new ranging from Abraham, Elijah and Gideon to the major prophets, and then the obvious like Simon Peter and Thomas. How many of us have experienced something in our lives that has seen the seeds of faith blown into a range of soils, and not all that is the good yet somehow knowing Christ has seen the beauty of the new life that is to come. God and Christ never lets us down.
Prayer
May God’s seeds grow in all our hearts. Amen