I’m into the last week or so of the Bible study notes for
September and October.
I have been
faithful and not skipped too many days except for last week when I was on
holiday. Not only had I taken my study with me but also a new notebook with the
intention of keeping some kind of journal of the places we visited, the things
we saw, the people we met, the food we ate – the usual fare.
The notebook is as new as it was when I
left.
The writer in me didn’t really
surface and it was too hot, and I was too miserably bitten all over to that care
much. A bottle of insect repellent with all natural ingredients I had picked up
from a craft fair, crafted to deal with the West Coast midge did little to stop
the nightly onslaught of Maltese mosquitos. But I digress.
The Bible notes have focussed on the book of Luke. I’m
more of an Old Testament gal really. I
feel like I have tramped over the gospels so often that it can be difficult to
find something new – not that rediscovering something old doesn’t have its
appeal.
We were into the parables of the mustard seed and the
yeast. I admit to groaning as a plethora
of stuff I already knew flapped around me like bats from an old belfry. I’d done the autopsy years back when I did my
“O” levels, “A” levels and a degree. I
knew context and form and had a mental filing cabinet’s worth of information gleaned
from sermons over the years. I felt
justified in groaning but settled down anyway and asked God to show me His
truth in the stories.
The Bible I’m using is on my kindle. Once I am done reading, and making copious notes,
that I really need to start looking over, I have developed a habit of “googling”
the story and making more copious notes from various study sites.
“Mel,” said God, “You asked for My truth on the
story. Why are you looking for someone
else’s truth?”
He boiled the story of the mustard seed down to just a
single sentence.
“It is like a
mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden.” Luke 13:19
The man’s action to take a seed and plant it in his
garden was a deliberate action.
He was
not a farmer in the parable of the Sower who scattered seeds.
This man took a single seed and planted
it.
He didn’t just clear the ground and
hope that a mustard seed would casually fall into the ground.
His actions were planned and intentional.
He didn’t just plant any seed. He took a mustard seed and he planted it. He
was not looking for an olive tree to grow in that space or a raspberry bush –
but a mustard tree. He wanted a mustard tree – not an apple tree or a date
palm. So he planted a mustard seed.
There is a whole thing about how small it was and how big
the tree turned out to be – but he had to plant the seed to get the tree.
Last year, this time last year, I planted a whole load of
bulbs. Incidentally it might interest you to know that once upon a long time
ago I mistook a daffodil bulb for an onion.
I was in the process of chopping the “onion” up to add to the frying pan
when the smell and the stickiness of the “onion” was so unfamiliar to me that I
realised my mistake before I tossed it to into the pan. Spring was greeted with daffodils, tulips and
crocuses. Without the planting spring would have meant dandelions and buttercups,
which nice as they are, sometimes, were not what I wanted.
My dad had an allotment.
A field on the outskirts of the village was given over to
allotments. The council, perhaps, had
done a dig over, divided it into strips and rented them out for measly sums. There was a long waiting list. Each strip needed
a proper going over to get rid of the big stones and the clumps of turned-over
grass and weeds. Once ready, soil worked
to a breadcrumb consistency, my dad planted vegetables. He did not expect a neat row of carrots to
simply appear. He planted stuff. He planted everything at once and months
later we harvested everything at once. We didn’t have a freezer and took bags
of goodies to church to hand out to people.
For a few short months were had lots of vegetables.
As Christians I think we all long for vibrant lives. Many of us settle for something
mediocre. We are almost content with the
spiritual dandelions and buttercups that come our way. But we don’t consciously take a seed – of love,
or mercy, or joy or patience – and deliberately plant it.
We listen to a sermon or make copious notes from Bible
study notes but we don’t deliberately select an aspect of the character of God
we want to see in our lives and plant the seed of it. We just hope that it will happen somehow.
How do we become an intentional seed planters?
By knowing that we need to be. Waiting for a tulip to appear when we know we
never planted the bulb is a waste of time. Tulips don’t work that way. Or
onions or carrots. Or love or compassion
– the really powerful variety!
By knowing what we want to see in the garden of our lives. We need a vision of what God intends us to
be. The man who planted the mustard seed had a picture in his mind’s eye of the
fully grown tree.
By taking the seeds and planting them. Seeds need to be pushed deep into the
soil. Lying a tulip bulb n top of the
soil will not get us the tulip in the spring. There it shrivels in the sun or
rots in the rain. It needs to be buried deep down. We need to plant our spiritual
seeds deep, digging down into our heart.
God has all the seeds of His character we will ever need
but leaves the planting of them up to us.
I want my mustard tree and I have the mustard seed in my
hand. It’s time to plant it.
