My Mom has one of the greenest thumbs. And I wish that I could say the same for me. But I can’t, lol. At least not an instantaneous gifting of growing things. But I am growing, in the area of growing. But most importantly, I am learning that spiritually speaking, to let God do the growing, in me and in others.

let God do the growing
Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

Plant and Water. But let God do the growing.

I received a young tree to plant, as a bereavement gift when one of my sisters had passed away. 

Now, this was such a beautiful thought.

But when the tree arrived, I just looked at it and the contents of the package. Yet I could not literally fathom actually planting this tree. 

Now it had nothing to do with the sender nor the gift itself. But it had EVERYTHING to do with me. As much as I’ve wanted to have a green thumb like my mom, I had more like an orange thumb…

Seriously, I’m just now, almost 10 years later, getting a grasp on growing things. During quarantine, we grew some herbs, I nursed an ivy plant back to heath and we grew some sweet potatoes. I’d say I’m on my way!

But at the time when I received this tree to plant, I just could not bear the thought of planting that tree and it dying. 

Can you imagine that?

Planting a tree in someone’s honor and killing it. Or allowing the tree to die. Oh no, I thought, not by my hands, I absolutely could not.

And because of that thought, I wouldn’t bring in any fresh flowers in the house because I just couldn’t watch them die. I’d seen enough dying to last me for the rest of my life.

So that young tree sat there, in our dining room. In its box for a while. And I eventually had it thrown away before it began to wither. 

See, when you’ve experienced so much loss and grief, you want to hang out and hang around people and things that are LIFE GIVING.

Life-Giving.

And I believe that is one of the reasons why I love sharing the powerful life giving words of Jesus. 

But as I was thinking about this story of the tree that I was afraid to plant, I thought about the idea of planting and sowing from a spiritual point of view.

Oftentimes we are reluctant to share our faith or reluctant to share life-giving words because we think that what we say won’t matter.

We think that we can’t change people’s mind.

And we think that we can’t make a different.

That it is a waste of time.

And you know what? We are right.

But GOD can.

He makes all the difference.

So our job is simply to plant and water. Our job is to sow the truth found in the Word of God. To share the goodness of His Kingdom. It is to point as many as we can to Him. And to water those seeds.

And it is GOD all by Himself that gives the INCREASE. He grows those seeds. Those mustard seeds of faith into huge trees of righteousness. Into co-laborers in the faith, women and men of God to be used for and by Him.

So whenever, we begin to think of planting, spiritually speaking, let us remember that it is not up to us to “grow” it! It’s left up to God to grow and mature the seeds we plant for Him. 

I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.
1 Corinthians 3:6 KJV

I hope that you enjoyed this article on “Plant and Water. But let God do the growing”. For more inspiration, connect with me via my monthly newsletter here.