Seeds

There’s something about fresh flowers that makes me so bubbly and happy inside. The act of holding just a few little living pieces of God’s creation in my hands before beautifully arranging them in a mason jar on the kitchen table brings me so much joy.

Recently, I’ve picked up a growing fascination with plants of all kinds. I now have sunflowers, daisies, forget-me-not’s, and succulents, along with 100 cacti seeds attempting to grow in my room, with my lavender seeds planted on the deck and an avocado I’m trying to get to spout from the pit. My room is a living mess of dirt and a few dead flower petals here and there right now, but even the mess brings me so much joy because of the beauty the blooming brings.

I decided to do a blog series, which is something new for me, but because of the recent plant obsession, I have so much I want to say about what God has been teaching me through the process of gardening. This one is about the seed.

Think of each human as a seed and God as the master gardener. Know that he plants us exactly where he wants us to grow. A lot of people might see humans as seeds just floating through the air falling wherever they so desire in life, but I think God plants us with a lot more intentionality than simply random chance. He plants us where he knows we will bloom to our maximum fullness and beauty. But we’ll get to the blooming in a later post.

As for the seed, there are all different types of seed, just as there are all different types of people. But just as seeds all turn into some sort of plant or another, so do humans. We are all equally valued and all have so much potential for growth and life, even if that looks completely different from the person growing right next to you.

For instance, this plant below might look completely ugly on the outside, but it has withstood the test of time and is 2,000 years old. It’s conquered the scorching desert heat of the day and the frost of the night, and is probably the strongest plant on earth…

And then, there’s this next plant that has stunning flower petals and bright green leaves. However, if a big storm hit, it would be torn apart in seconds. Although it has a lot of outward beauty, it does not have the strong roots and strength to withstand intense sun or winds…

This goes to show that just as flowers have different inward and outward characteristics because of their seed and where they are planted, humans have different characteristics based on their DNA and the environment in which they grow up. But there’s nothing wrong with any of them. They are simply all made differently to serve the purpose for which they are planted.

Growing up as a child, it was hard to understand why people were so different from one another. I thought that everyone should be beautiful like the pretty people I saw on the covers of the magazines. I thought that all people should hold the same values of integrity, commitment, punctuality, and more that I was taught from my parents growing up. I didn’t understand why people couldn’t just be born perfect with the strong inside of the first flower and the beautiful outside of the second. I thought everyone should fit in the same exact mold. But now I get the reason why we don’t.

God has beautifully and wonderfully hand-crafted each and every seed exactly to his liking and placed each one in soil that he knew would be perfect for that specific seed. 

How boring would it be if we were all the same. If we all went to college and got desk jobs for the rest of our lives, who would farm or work in restaurants? If we all were artistically-minded, who would create the medicine to help us when we are sick? If we all were made to play basketball, who would be in the stands to cheer us on?

The beauty of the seed is the undiscovered diversity it holds inside of it, just waiting to burst out. 

I hope you know and take heart that your life is not supposed to look like anyone else’s. God hand-crafted you to be a unique individual and take on a set of circumstances that only your exact characteristics are made to handle.

I just want to leave you with one of my favorite passages in the Bible:

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me.” – Psalm 139:13-16 (Emphasis mine)