Planting Seeds of Faith: Lessons From Our Garden

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Planting seeds is always an act of faith. Whether tomatoes and cucumbers or something less tangible–hope, trust–you can’t know what they’ll yield until you sow. Nothing’s lost if the harvest is all you hoped, but is it worth the effort and heartache if it’s not? After several years of growing a garden and a few more years than that trying to keep my faith alive, I’ve learned this about both: whatever the size of the harvest, it is without fail more substantial if I plant something than nothing.

It’s not easy making the desert blossom. Gardening on our arid little piece of ground is a fight we don’t always win, at least not on all fronts. The scorching sun is relentless, rain is as scarce as the grasshoppers and earwigs are plentiful, and many seeds courageous enough to sprout are feasts for the pests before they even have a chance.

But many are not. Despite the odds stacked against them, they thrive and bear their fruit abundantly.

As long as we give them a chance and plant them.

Deterred by those stiff odds, many people don’t.

Sometimes the greatest enemy to the life in a seed is not what might kill it as it grows but the fear of what might kill it that denies it an opportunity to even sprout.

Even bugs and desert heat will usually allow it that.

It takes patience to nurture seeds. It takes work. You have to make judgment calls, let go of the failures, gratefully embrace the successes, and be flexible in your definition of the word harvest. “But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.”

No matter where you sow or what you’re up against.

Be Patient With Your Seeds of Faith

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Chinese bamboo. Plant one of those seeds, nurture it with all your heart, and in five years–yes, five years–you’ll see the fruits of your labors. That’s how long it takes a Chinese bamboo to appear above ground.

Six weeks later, it’ll be 80 feet tall.

Five years establishing an elaborate root system so it can shoot up like a miracle and sustain its height.

That’s a long time to invest in something you can’t see, only able to hope the bamboo is doing its job underground and that what you’re doing above ground is adequate. Wishing you could dig it up just to peek, but knowing that if all is going well, such interference will sabotage everything.

It takes more than the usual faith to grow a bamboo.

But what a reward when it breaks through the soil!

I had a small-scale bamboo experience with our parsnips this spring. We planted our root vegetables in late March. Soon, the carrots were tiny green mohawks in the garden, and some beets had joined them. But no sign of the parsnips.

A bamboo is supposed to take five years. Parsnips should only take a few weeks, and we were past that.

I decided if they were still MIA come that Saturday, I’d hoe the row and reseed.

On Thursday, I found these.

Not just a few of them. It was like the entire row sprouted overnight.

If I’d set that deadline any sooner, I’d have destroyed them all, along with any chance they had to grow into these.

It’s agony to wait on seeds of faith, but think long and hard before you and your despair dig them up. You never know what’s going on underground.

Bamboo Seed or Bad Seed?

All that said, sometimes something really is wrong. The seeds are too old, didn’t get enough water, got too much water. It happens. And you have no way of knowing until the crop doesn’t show.

But how do you really know it’s failed and isn’t just taking a little extra time? How long do you wait before you give up on it? Too soon and you may dig up a bunch of freshly sprouted seeds, as I almost did with our parsnips. Too long, though, and there won’t be enough growing season left to get a harvest from what you reseed.

How do you know whether you’ve placed your faith in a bamboo seed that’s just building a root system or a bad seed that can’t grow roots at all? Whether you’re wasting precious time hoping something will live that in reality might already be dead?

Good question.

Seeds of faith are challenging because do any of us really know what to expect? We know a bamboo’s timeline. It’s been witnessed over and over. But our own timelines–I don’t know about you, but this is the first time I’ve lived my life. I don’t know the germination period of my desires or the answers to my prayers. How long is too long to wait?

If the general flow of life is any indication, my seeds of faith are long overdue for sprouting and I should seriously consider the possibility they’ve failed.

I have.

But how do I know there’s not just a future 80-foot bamboo under my barren soil putting down roots of steel? Or a lot of tenacious parsnips just waiting for the right conditions?

I don’t.

Enter Alma’s counsel to the Zoramites. It’s the only answer I have for this conundrum.

Have Faith in Your Seeds of Faith

“Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves–It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.”

The advantage of planting seeds in your heart is that, unlike seeds in the garden, whatever you can’t see going on, you can at least feel.

There are few fruits of my faith I can physically see. Moroni says we receive no witness until after the trial of our faith, and sometimes I think not even then. But I know what feels true. What feels right. What is delicious. I know what I believe Heavenly Father has told me about the harvest my seeds of faith will yield. So notwithstanding the fact they have yet to appear, I don’t think they’re dead.

I err on the side of the bamboo and parsnips. They’re coming.

It takes faith to plant a seed. It also takes faith to cheer it on, especially when it feels in vain. But if what you hope for enlarges your soul, enlightens your understanding, swells within you, brings you to life and lights your world, cheer it on anyway. No matter how long it takes to bear fruit, don’t doubt that it will. It’s a good seed if it makes you feel all that.

The Harvest

If you knew without doubt when you sowed your seeds that they would go from this…

…to this…

…and from this…

…to this…

…would you hesitate for one second?

Obviously, these are pictures of a vegetable harvest, but imagine a spiritual, emotional, mental, or professional equivalent. Imagine this kind of return on your investment. Prolific peace, abundant success, overflowing fulfillment. It feels pretty good. Definitely worth whatever blood, sweat, and tears you poured into it.

But what if what you planted turned into this?

Still worth it?

Here’s the rundown on these three pitiful pictures. Apply it to your seeds of faith wherever or however they’re planted and whatever shape they’re in.

All of these pictures, the good, the bad, and the ugly, are from our garden this year. Some things really thrived. Some things really didn’t.

Our summer squash and beets have been a banquet for the bugs, and some of our tomato plants, I think, aren’t getting along with the green beans, which we planted next to them before I read that tomatoes and green beans don’t get along.

But we still got a harvest off those sad, dried-up tomato plants. Not of tomatoes, but of experience. We won’t plant tomatoes next to the green beans anymore.

Look what they’re surrounded by, though! He who sows bountifully shall reap also bountifully. Even if not everything he sows lives. When you plant twenty-something tomato plants, you don’t feel the loss of a few so keenly.

As for all the meals the bugs stole off our beets, there are probably two or three meals’ worth still left for us. That’s more beets than we’d get to eat if we hadn’t planted any.

The summer squash–I confess, that was a tragedy. A rare case where planting something yielded no more than planting nothing. That’s how much we got before the squash bugs ate them. Nothing.

But say hello to last year’s squash.

And beets from the year before. They looked like this last year, too.

Just because something doesn’t thrive one season doesn’t mean it can’t ever. We will plant beets and summer squash again. We know what they can be. Even if they weren’t all that this year.

A harvest is so much more than its tangible yield. Fruits, vegetables. Marriage, children. Financial success. It’s everything you learned while you worked for it.

Even if you learned that gardening–or whatever it is–isn’t for you. That’s more than you knew before you tried it.

My Seeds of Faith

I’ve sown a plethora of seeds. Not just in a garden, but in my hopes for the future. In a kindergarten classroom. On a blog.

I don’t know if I will ever have the many children I dreamed of. My age increasingly suggests not.

Did anything I taught my students make a difference? I see where some of them are today and wonder.

I’m not sure how far this blog reaches. Analytics say my audience is pretty small.

But I’ve learned more waiting for that family of my own, more about myself, my faith, and the God I place it in than I’d ever know if he handed me everything right out of the gate. More than I’d know if I’d given up on my seeds of faith or never planted them at all.

And perhaps few of the seeds sown in my classroom took root in my students. But they did in me. And I don’t know they’re not still lying in my students’ hearts ready to spring up when needed. I don’t know that some of them haven’t sprung up already. If none of them ever do–I could only control what I planted. Especially with a five-year-old, there’s not much you can do about the elements they’re exposed to after they leave your classroom. Sometimes you just have to know you did what was in your power and leave the rest to God’s.

As for The Lidless Pot–it might not touch a thousand hearts, but it touches more than it could if I wrote nothing. My experiences may not resonate with everyone, but if they resonate with some, that’s a harvest that’s worth it.

My seeds of faith might never grow into an 80-foot bamboo. Yours might not, either. But they’re worth planting if they can grow into something. Even if it’s just a better you.

Actually–not to sound like Dr. Seuss or anything, but a better you is the same as an 80-foot bamboo.

What seeds of faith are you waiting on? Leave a comment, and as always, please share this post if it’s been an encouragement to you.

Scripture References

• 2 Corinthians 9:6
• Alma 32:28
• Ether 12:6

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