When You Put a Seed in the Ground

Look at this!  Can you believe it?

I can't.

The Saturday before Easter I put a packet of Zinnia seeds in a pot of soil in my backyard.  I patted the dirt down gently and watered it.  I was skeptical of anything happening because my experience with seeds and plants is extremely limited.  KJ actually doesn't like it when I buy potted flowers because he feels like they face certain death by my hand.  There are a lot of areas I desire to learn and grow in, and tending plants and flowers and landscaping is one of them.  Maybe not landscaping.

But look!  My seeds germinated.  I've tried to be very disciplined about watering this pot of dirt during the past week and a half.  I picked the Zinnias because the packet said they bloomed all the way through the summer, and they needed full sun.  And we have full sun.  Yesterday I went out in the backyard with James so he could run around and couldn't believe my eyes when I saw these little bits of green pushing up through the dirt.

Looking at these pictures this morning brings a lot of words to mind and kind of makes me want to read The Secret Garden.  "Might I have a bit of earth?"

Would you look at that.  When you put a seed in the ground something new and alive comes up.  There's a lesson in that.  Didn't Jesus say something about it?

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,

it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."

Those seeds sat on my kitchen shelf for a couple of weeks before I put them in the ground.  No change happened to them sitting high up on the shelf, and when I buried them in the dark I couldn't see what was happening.  I wondered if anything would happen at all.  

"He who loves his life loses it; 

and he who hates his life in this world shall keep it to life eternal."

It encouraged my heart this morning to remember that God is doing work and bringing new life in the dark and secret places where I die to myself, when I lay my life down and nobody sees.