Seeds in the Ground

Our lives are full of memories.  Some of the memories are powerful and unforgettable.  Others are like a story without an ending.  Sometimes we get caught up in life with other people, share a brief moment together, and then paths go different ways never to be joined again.  Most of us can look back over the span of the years and see those unfinished stories.  It is hard not to wonder how things turned out.

 

I remember a young couple who lost a daughter at childbirth long years ago.  Our lives touched in those moments and I have often wondered how the years have gone for them.  I think about some of the young people who spend time with me trying to sort out their future, but the years have provided only space that has separated us.  And, I often think about all those sermons I preached.  Some of them were good for sleeping, but there were a few along the way that seemed to touch a heart in a way that promised change.  But, there are things we never know.  We never know how so many of the stories from our past were actually written.

 

It all points to the probability that such is a part of God's plan.  If we knew too much about the rest of the stories we have helped write, we might likely feel like a total failure, or maybe we might get carried away and give ourselves credit which should only be given to the work of the Holy Spirit.  The truth is we are seed planters.  Seeds are what we hold in our hands.  Seeds are what we thrown out into the lives of others.  Sometimes those seeds take awhile to make something which can be seen and sometimes they seem all but wasted.  Some things belong to God.  The seed planting belongs to us.  Anything after that belongs to Him.