In last week’s pondering, I recounted the background story of Wordle, and left us all to ponder: “Where are you planting, watering, and tending to that which God has given you to grow?” This week, I want to provide a follow-up to that, providing a personal testimony that showed me just how important planting seeds are and how the fruit may show up at an unexpected time well after the initial planting and tending begins.
Shortly after I wrote last week’s pondering, my phone rang. As I looked at the caller ID, I immediately noticed it was from an out-of-state area code. In our modern era of automated telemarketing calls consistently wanting to update your car warranty, like many of you, I ordinarily just let these unidentified calls just go to voicemail. However, something compelled me to answer this one, and I’m glad I did. It turns out that it was a customer of mine from my previous career. I hadn’t spoken to him since leaving that line of work five and a half years ago, but here he was giving me a call! Yet, he wasn’t calling for anything business related. Instead, he had come across my contact info in his phone and just called to say hi, to see how I had been doing. We talked for several minutes catching up on one another’s lives over the years and the call ended with him inviting me out to eat the next time that I was in the area.
Go figure. Someone I had worked with half a decade ago was calling just to reconnect and see how things were going. Looking back on it now, I believe it was the Holy Spirit that moved me to answer the phone that day, just to show how important seed planting is, for the seed that I had planted with him all those years ago, enabled our relationship to be cultivated even more all these years later. The truth is, we never know who all we may have an impact on in our lives. So, the task before us is to live a life worthy of making an impact with every single encounter we have. You never know how that single instance may be a seed being planted, watered, or cultivated for the harvest of a wonderful relationship.
Pastor Steve
So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. (Gal 6:9, NRSV)