Planting

 Ive got propagation on my mind at the moment.  In Creche this coming Sunday we are going to be talking about how God is patient with us, and we shall be planting cress seeds to show the children that it takes time for things to grow and we need to be patient ( 5 days is about the limit you can expect a three year old to wait for results! 😊)   Then on Mother's Day, the following week, some of the older kids will be planting out the baby spider plants which Ive been cultivating at home for the past year or so.   I've picked them off the mother plant and put them in water so they have grown roots and the kids will pot them on into compost to give to their Mums.   And on Monday I bought some daffodil and grape hyacinth bulbs which are on the verge of flowering to plant in my window box. 

I dont know much about horticulture but I started wondering why spider plants ( and strawberries) grow their babies on stems which eventually droop down to the ground and root themselves.  Why dont they have seeds like......cress?  And why does cress have seeds but daffodils grow from bulbs?  Or is a bulb just a very large seed?  I dont think it is but Im not sure.   In the middle of all this wondering I have the vaguest of senses that perhaps there is a God lesson to learn here.  But for the life of me, right now I cant see what it is.  😊

( You cant see the longish pause there was between that last sentence and this one as I formulated some sort of thought )

I wonder if we are ' grown' in different ways, like the plants are.   Perhaps some of us have grown like spider plants.  We have stayed connected to our parent plant until we are reasonably well formed and weighty enough to reach the earth and root ourselves in.   Maybe these people are the ones who have grown up in Christian homes and been spiritually nourished all their lives?  Then there are others who grow from a seed - like the parable of the sower.  The Word has landed on their soil and been hidden in the dark for a while, watered and heated by the sun.  And with the right conditions and time it grows and produces fruit.   I think maybe Im one of those.  I didnt grow up in a Christian home but I heard the gospel preached through a youth group when I was 16 and the Word took root in me and grew.

Then there are the bulbs.  Bulbs grow little offshoot bulbs under the ground which eventually become capable of producing plants themselves.  Bulbs can reproduce without ever seeing daylight.  I wonder if there are people who are producing fruit but it is largely unseen - maybe they dont even see it themselves. Bulbs tend to be planted deeper into the earth than seeds or runners and have quite a bit of growing to do before the evidence is seen above ground.   Im sure we have all been through seasons when we have felt the weight of the world on top of us and the darkness surrounding us, unaware that we might only be millimetres from breaking through into the sunshine.  

However He grows us, we all have two things in common.  Roots that go down and shoots that grow up.  Perhaps thats why we so often feel that we are living in a strange tension.  We need to go deep and be rooted and grounded in His love, but we also need to grow up and bear fruit and feel the Son shining on us.

Here endeth the mad ponderings of someone with too many spider plant babies in her house.  Apologies for the randomness of this post. 😄