Seeds

               Now He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness; you will be enriched in everything for all liberality, which through us is producing thanksgiving to God.  (II Corinthians 9:10-11)

As a gardener, one of the things that I have been trying to do is to grow plants from seeds and collect the seeds they produce at the end of the growing season, so I don’t have to buy seeds again. I can’t say I have this figured out yet. (And it doesn’t help when one misplaces the seeds one buys!) But that’s one goal. Another is to transplant “weeds” or to collect pieces of the plant that I then root and plant, with the same idea in mind.

I may go buy seeds or find them or the plants I want, and some people might wish to claim that doing so means God didn’t supply them. Ultimately, He did because as the Creator, He set up the means by which I could later acquire them, no matter how I did it. And, I think it worth noting here that His providing it was not done by throwing out all the seeds that would ever be needed. Instead, He arranged for one or more original plants of the type to produce more seeds than necessary to replace the plant.

In the case of this passage, the harvest provided is righteousness. If we draw Dallas Willard’s ideas into things, righteousness isn’t just doing the right thing, it’s becoming the sort of person who naturally does the right thing. And giving thanks is one of the right things that someone who naturally does the right things does. And because that sort of person gives thanks, the seeds of doing right things are planted in his heart, but also in the heart of the person to whom the thanks was given.

The person who feels appreciated tends to work harder. The person whose day has been lifted a little will have more strength and grace to give to others. It’s not karma, but it’s like the “pay it forward” idea. This corresponds with the plants bearing more seeds than necessary to replace themselves. One person doing one right thing may produce right things in one more person, or two, or a hundred, or a thousand, who plant seeds of righteousness in others in a chain reaction.

So, the question of the day is – what do you need in order to produce a harvest of doing right? Ask for it and thank Him in advance.