Seeds are slow

I love the place where we now live. I love the mountains, the cool fall evenings, and most importantly my church and the people. One of the things I do not like is the fact that where we live just happens to be in the desert - maybe not officially but the landscape and lack of rain would suggest otherwise. This is frustrating if you are trying to have a lawn where your kids can play in the grass. Last year I tilled in topsoil, manure, and compost and laid some fresh sod on top of it. It looked beautiful, green, and plush. As the temperatures and our water bill rose, some of the sod began to die off. I tried desperately to save it but nothing seemed to help. Long story short, the majority of it failed to grow back this spring so our already small yard was mostly dirt with a few surviving patches of grass. I was quite frustrated and purchased a bag of seed just to see if it would fare any better. Sure enough the small amount of seed I planted in ground that I turned over has sprouted and is thriving even better than the remaining sod.

I'm sure there is a horticultural explanation for this, and I'm also sure if I wanted to fork over a few hundred bucks a month for water I could have had better results. The truth is I don't have a green thumb and we don't have a lot of extra green to throw at the problem.  Over the last few months I've felt God challenging me to do more. To become a better leader. To dig deeper and reach higher. For me, it's easy to become energized the moment I first believe God is stirring within me. I feel refreshed and focused and ready for something new. But honestly, after a few months if I don't see any major accomplishments or changes taking place I begin to stall out.

I realize that all too often in my life, God wants me to be more like a seed and less like sod. I didn't plant, water, or grow the sod - I drove to the home improvement store and loaded it into the back of my pickup and then laid it in my backyard. The seeds I planted are different. They weren't even green when they fell to the ground, they were blue. It took over a week for them to even break the surface, and even then they looked small and fragile. I don't want to appear weak or fragile. I don't want God to change me for the sake of growth. I resist that process. Seeds are slow, I want fast. We live in a world that thrives on the instant, and the appearance of success - regardless of who earned it - is so important. At the end of the day though, I am much prouder and more concerned about the growth of those seeds that I have planted than the sod I purchased. Don't buy someone else's success and try to sell it as your own. I believe God wants to plant something within me that may take a while to grow, but in the end will be so much more valuable to me. This isn't an easy process, and it's definitely not a speedy one. Seeds are slow. Seeds have to die to live. In John 12:24 Jesus says: " Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." Choose to be a seed over someone else's sod.