Tiny Seeds and the God Who Makes Them Grow

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When someone leaves a comment on my blog site, I receive a notification by email. As Ray drove Mother and me home from church last night, I checked my email. I was so touched by this comment from a regular reader that I emailed her right away and asked for her permission to write about it. I’ll call the reader Jill.

Jill was responding to the post from yesterday, when I mentioned singing “This Little Light of Mine” and “The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock” in Sunday School. Jill wrote:

I was not raised in church but had the privilege of going regularly for about a year when I was 10-11 with a family who moved in down the road. They had 4 children and I recall singing these songs as we drove in the car. After that year, these songs were what I had left to reference as well as John 3:16 which my Grandmother had previously taught me, because we did not even have a Bible in my home. I’ve always been thankful that God placed that family in my life for that short time.

My heart is overwhelmed with three realities:

• God makes mighty plants from the tiny seeds we sow.
• I was blessed to grow up with Christian parents.
• Your children are blessed to be growing up with you.

Tiny Seeds

One day Jesus told this parable:

The kingdom of God is like a man
who casts seed upon the soil;
and he goes to bed at night
and gets up by day,
and the seed sprouts and grows—
how, he himself does not know.
The soil produces crops by itself;
first the blade, then the head,
then the mature grain in the head.
Mark 4:26-28

The parents of those four children who took Jill to church cast seeds on the soil of Jill’s heart. God made them grow.

My Parents

I am thankful that Jill told me about her childhood. When I wrote about those two Sunday School songs in that post, I thought about children who grew up unchurched. I was concerned that I might have readers who couldn’t identify with what I was saying.

I know I didn’t deserve to grow up in the home I did. I know I was there only by God’s grace. I praise Him for placing me in a family with parents who walked across the street to church with my brother and me, as folks used to say, “everytime the doors were opened.” Long after Mother’s own children were grown and gone, she taught a children’s Bible class on Wednesday evenings. When Daddy died unexpectedly at age 72, he was in the middle of a month when he was serving the Lord’s Supper every Sunday morning.

God used my upbringing to teach me about Him and I am grateful. He also used the tiny seeds Jill’s grandmother and the family down the road planted to bring Jill to Him.

You

I am grateful to you for all of the ways you teach your children about Jesus. I am grateful for the ways you plant seeds inside your family and beyond. Remember that God is busy making them grow.

And whoever in the name of a disciple
gives to one of these little ones
even a cup of cold water to drink,
truly I say to you,
he shall not lose his reward.
Matthew 10:42

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