Sometimes packets of seeds are given out to the parade-watchers along the route. It will happen again this year, as the Memorial Day Parade passes in front of our building at 10 AM tomorrow.
(Come around nine, so you can attend the outdoor Memorial Day ceremony at our Civic Center. Then take your place at our curb, sit back, and enjoy! Be sure to attend our Memorial Day fellowship luncheon right afterward.)
Now, back to seeds. I still have my packet of seeds from last year’s parade! I really ought to plant them. Condo rules prohibit me from planting in the earth around my place. I’ll have to plant them in a pot, but I’ll have to be careful where I find the dirt; I’m not allowed to dig around my place, either!
According to the picture on the packet, the seeds ought to produce some pretty black-eyed Susans. They’re not doing much good in the paper packet right now. I will have to take them out of the packet and plant them in the ground. I will have to tend them with water, and make sure that they have adequate sunlight. The fear of a late frost is behind us, now, according the Almanac. (It’s May 13, in case you’re wondering.)
I wonder, if we were to interview a seed, what it might say to the prospect of being buried, of passing through an experience of dying to itself, to produce a new life it has not yet experienced (Jn. 12:24). Would the little seed be willing? Only faith would produce such willingness.
Jesus spoke of seeds exhibiting faith, a faith to see beyond its present circumstances and to imagine (if a little seed can imagine) a life of service and strength far greater than it presently has (Mtt. 17:20). It shows no fear of dying to its present life, to enter a new one, a life far more glorious than it now has. It has faith to leave the details of the new life up to God Who created it. The little seed is not worried about what it does not know.
Those who have come to Christ for salvation have shown such a faith. They have come to believe the words of Jesus, that the life of the redeemed is a better one on earth, than the life of a sinner.
They continue that faith for the rest of their lives, and they are not afraid, when death comes. In faith, they know that God has a life prepared for them that is even better and more beautiful than anything they can imagine on earth. They die to the present. They have done this all of their lives. They die, that they might live again.
In Memory of my friends, Dan & Jennifer Tarjeft, killed May 17, 2008
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