A time for seeds

Out on my bike recently I was wondering whether to take a route where I knew there were likely to be blackberries, to see if they were ready for picking yet.  However, I hadn’t gone far when I bumped into a friend (not literally, you will be glad to hear) who was also out for a ride.  A potential blackberry investigation turned into a visit to a café for coffee, cake, and a catch-up!

Cycling home later, the breeze was beginning to increase and I became aware of lots of little parachutes drifting across the road: thistledown, dandelion clocks, the soft white fluff of rosebay willow herb…  The summer flowering season is drawing to a close and the plants were doing what they were created to do: Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed...according to its kind...” (Genesis 1:11)

What sort of seeds do I produce, I asked myself.  Seeds of discord or seeds of harmony?  Seeds of haste or seeds of patience?  Seeds of grumbling or seeds of thankfulness?  Seeds of self-centredness or seeds of kindness? 

‘Love… is kind,’ the Apostle Paul reminds us.  “Have you ever noticed how much of Christ’s life was spent in doing kind things – in merely doing kind things?  God has put in our power the happiness of those about us, and that is largely to be secured by our being kind to them… I wonder why it is that we are not all kinder than we are.  How much the world needs it.  How easily it is done...” (Henry Drummond – The Greatest Thing in the World)

Love suffers long and is kind;

Love does not envy;

Love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;

Does not behave rudely,

Does not seek its own,

Is not provoked,

Thinks no evil;

Does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;

Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8a