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By Barry Buzza
 There's a picture painted with words in the Psalms about a farmer who is carrying a bag of seeds. As he walks along, spreading his seeds on the soil, he is crying. I guess he feels like he's wasting his time spreading his seeds on what looks like barren soil.
To me, the story is about all of us who have our own satchel of seeds. Wherever we go, everyday, we are generously dropping seeds of encouragement, kindness and acceptance. Sometimes we despair because we don't see immediate results from our efforts.
Today I had a vivid reminder of the potential power that lays dormant in our seeds. I went with my friend and co-author Emily where she will be speaking to the high school students at a local private school. In her address Emily told about her own past rebellion and described a bit of her bad behaviour when she had been a high school student in another Lower Mainland municipality. Since then, her life has turned 180 degrees and she has become a high achieving, successful young adult. She is not only a full-time student working toward her doctorate and has co-authored three books with me, but she also serves as a pastor in a fruitful church.
After her talk we were speaking with the principal of the school and she mentioned a teacher who'd had a remarkable influence on her life. It just so happened the very man she was praising is the vice-principal of the school we were visiting. So we went with the principal to talk with her former teacher.
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After a formal greeting, Emily reminded the man that he'd been the vice-principal of the school she'd formerly attended and that he'd had a profound influence in her life. She told him that in her senior year, she'd been very rebellious and had attended few of her required classes. It got so bad that her teacher had sent a sealed letter home to her guardians to tell them of her misbehaviour. Emily had opened up the sealed envelope, read the letter, and knew that she would be in deep trouble, so she'd humbled herself and gone to see this vice-principal. She asked for his mercy and promised that she'd work at behaving in the future. The man graciously forgave her and ripped up the letter. Emily remembers that moment of grace as one of the turning points in her life.
The man with whom we stood in the hall talking could hardly believe his ears as he listened to Emily's story. An incident that he could scarcely remember, a seed of grace and forgiveness he'd casually dropped years ago, had blossomed into a very mature, fruitful tree. They both laughed as they reminisced about Emily's years at the school and the changed person she has become.
Do you remember the story of Johnny Appleseed? As John Chapman traversed the central United States planting hundreds of thousands of apple seeds, he had no idea the apples they would eventually produce would sustain hundreds of pioneers many years later as families settled in the west.
I encourage you to keep dropping seeds from your bag wherever you go. We can be assured that in every seed of kindness we sow, there is a potential tree that one day will be full of fruit and more seeds.
Barry Buzza, a regular contributor to canadianchristianity.com, is a veteran pastor, and also the president of the The Foursquare Gospel Church of Canada. www.barrybuzza.com www.foursquare.ca
January 17/2008
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