Of Flowers and Faith: Planting Seeds that Grow into Heavenly Treasures

Posted on Dec 28, 2021 Topic : Inspirational/Devotional, Women's Christian Living
Posted by : Christie Purifoy

If my life ever flashed before my eyes in a moment of crisis, no doubt I would see many of the memories you might expect on a typical highlight reel: the wedding to my high school sweetheart, the births of our children, our first tiny apartment. But if such experiences really do lay bare the relative value of our lived experiences, then one other memory would surely make the cut: the memory of my sister listening to me describe how overwhelmed I felt by the big, bare backyard of my first real house before telling me to buy a packet of zinnia seeds and toss them around my empty flowerbeds.

Those seeds changed my life.

Every small schoolchild is taught to unleash the power of a seed. Over the years of my early schooldays, I brought home to my mother quite a few paper cups bursting with green bean, sunflower, and pumpkin seedlings. Such things are as ubiquitous as classroom pets and apples for the teacher. Yet somehow that lesson–of seed plus soil plus water plus light equals Life–faded from my mind. By the time I was an adult and a new homeowner I had completely forgotten such things were possible. I had forgotten that Beauty was possible. I had no idea that my new backyard could be much more than a burden and a chore. All that changed with a handful of zinnia seeds.

For most people across the breadth of human history, at least since the dawn of agriculture, seeds have been a matter of life and death. Seeds were food and a portion of every harvest was allowed to set seed for next year’s farm or garden. But most of us today live our lives a little more distant from the source of our daily bread. While I am grateful that my daughter’s apple-eating habit does not depend on my own skill as an orchard keeper, I recognize now that God never intended us to live our lives entirely removed from the dust–the soil–of our own making. For we were made of earth dirt, and we were placed, at the beginning, in a garden. These things–soil and gardens, seeds and fruit–are not merely metaphors. They are rich in spiritual meaning, yes, but they are also the very substance of ourselves.

We need them. More than we know.

I did not know how much I needed homegrown flowers. Those first zinnias were a revelation. How was it possible that one paper packet purchased for $2.95 at the local garden center could transform the flowerbeds around my house? How could something so small give me endless bouquets in rainbow colors for my own kitchen table and more to spare for my neighbor? Why had no one ever told me that such treasure could be had so cheaply and so simply? And it is treasure, even treasure of a heavenly sort. The final glorious vision of our future with God offered to us in the last book of the Bible depicts a garden that is also somehow a city. Eden and Jerusalem have been restored and united and God makes his home with us.

I long for that place and that day, but I am not inactive in my waiting. I have gone on planting seeds, not only zinnias but now also a breathtaking array of garden flowers from cosmos to snapdragons to laceflowers and more.

Each seed is a prayer that will be answered in part by the abundance of the summer garden and in full with the return of Christ our King.

Come, Lord Jesus.