by Victoria Heinecke

Blooming Where They’re Planted.

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

When I was a child, my father dug a flower bed to teach me how to raise flowers. I grew marigolds and zinnias. At summer’s end, I’d collect the flower heads which contained the seeds. It was easy to find marigold seeds, as they were large and tightly clustered together.

Zinnia seeds are harder to find, or perhaps I lacked the patience to see them. Eventually, I’d crush the heads in my hands and till the broken bits into the soil. Pink, orange, yellow and white flowers would bloom the following spring.

These daisies are at the end of their life cycle, their green domes bursting with seeds. How will their seeds be sown?

Sometimes, we plant our seeds under what seems the proper conditions for growth. Sometimes, we scatter our seeds haphazardly, and somehow they thrive. Then there’s the random animal or bird who eats our flowers and plants the seeds as part of its digestive cycle. The wind also carries seeds on its drafts, and they bloom where they land.

“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.“
1 Corinthians 3:6-7 New Revised Standard Version

Most of the time, sharing the gospel seems to be about spreading seeds, rather than planting them. God places all of us where we can sow the seeds of God’s message of love and forgiveness, and every garden needs a gardener.

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, …
        giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
    it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
    and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”
Isaiah 55:10a,11 New Revised Standard Version

God gives growth to our seeds when we share the gospel. Ultimately, it is he alone gives life to that seed, whatever the condition.

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Photo copyright Sue Langer