Trusting God with the Seeds That You Plant
Back in the winter, when Ray and I were on a speaking tour in California, we had a wonderful visit with my college roommate and her husband. She grew up first in China and then in Hong Kong. Alison (the name she chose when she came to America) came straight from Hong Kong to my dorm room at Cumberland College in Lebanon, Tennessee. Her husband Chong came to Texas from South Korea when he was a teenager. They have lived in San Diego since not long after they finished college. Alison’s career was as a devoted stay-at-home mama; Chong is a retired engineer.
One of their hobbies is feeding the birds in their backyard. Alison and Chong purchase from a pet store the worms that the birds enjoy, and they feed them faithfully. They have watched generations grow up. The birds have learned to catch the worms in midair when Alison and Chong throw them. The bird parents trust Alison and Chong so much that they bring their babies to eat.
My uncle Preston tamed a wild pigeon when he was a boy. As he walked to the barn to milk his family’s three cows each morning, the pigeon sat on his shoulder both going and coming. As Preston walked along the bird fiddled with Preston’s ear with his wing.
Yesterday afternoon I thought about writing about Mark 4:30-32 for today’s post. Since Jesus mentioned birds in the passage, I looked for pictures of birds in the online image file of Library of Congress. I found a wonderful series of pictures of a snowmobile driver feeding birds by hand. In this picture, he feeds a native Rocky Mountain songbird called the gray jay.
One of our Memorial Day activities was riding on paddle boats at a nearby park. As we passed under a low bridge (as in so low, we had to lie down in the paddle boat to get under it), I saw swallows flying to their feather-lined mud nests.
God knew when He made birds that people would find them fascinating. Knowing that we took notice of them, Jesus used them to teach us lessons. His description of the kingdom of God in Mark 4 reminds me of what you do. You are a mustard seed planter. You faithfully plant seeds in the fertile hearts, minds, and souls of your children day after day. As you do that faithfully, you can trust God to do powerful and everlasting things with those seeds.
And He said, “How shall we picture the kingdom of God,
or by what parable shall we present it?
It is like a mustard seed,
which, when sown upon the soil,
though it is smaller than all the seeds that are upon the soil,
yet when it is sown, it grows up
and becomes larger than all the garden plants
and forms large branches;
so that the birds of the air can nest under its shade.”
Mark 4:30-32
I love how God uses you to bless and help others. May I use some of these thoughts in my SS Class next week? It is about Faith. This would go well with the lesson!