Seeds

I have been thinking about seeds a lot lately. It's fascinating how something so small and simple looking (on the outside) can grow into something so different in form and size and color. Think about an oak tree starting out as a tiny little acorn! Wildlife cameraman and photographer Neil Bromhall captured the beginning of this transformation in his video of an acorn seedling sprouting into a baby oak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK4LjURtaDw&feature=related.

Also fascinating to think about, several environmental conditions must be met for the seed to grow. If the soil temperature is too hot or too cold, growth is unlikely. If the seed is buried too shallow or too deep, growth is unlikely. If the seed receives too much water or not enough, growth is unlikely. But seeds are well designed. Generally speaking, the life of a seed is safely held within a protective structure, the seed coat. Ideally, the seed coat protects the "unborn plant" from harm and only allows good things to enter.

As essential as this protective layer is, it must be broken for the seed to grow and flourish once the right environmental conditions have been met. If the seed coat does not give way to the growing life inside, the plant will die, or at the very least its growth will be impaired.

1 Cor 15:37—And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel….

We don't bury a seed in the ground expecting a giant seed to sprout. We bury a seed expecting something different to break through the ground; we expect a vegetable or a tree or a flower to sprout. What we are in the beginning is not what we are intended to be in the end.

I am now in an environment conducive to growth. God, please help me to trust in You and to allow life to break through the seed coat.

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