I love plants: trees, flowers, shrubs, fungi, grasses: they are all beautiful! I don’t have a spectacularly green thumb, but I also don’t have a completely brown thumb. I have grown my fair share of plants, and also killed a few. I’ve always tried to have plants in my home, although right now it’s hard to because my cats like to nibble on them, which isn’t great for their health. I tried getting them “cat grass” but they still preferred my plants, so I had to move them all to higher ground to save them.
I have always wanted to grow an avocado plant. I don’t know why, but it’s been a desire for many years. I have gone through many avocado seeds in my attempts to grow an avocado plant, have tried for many years, and in different ways. I stuck toothpicks in the side of the seeds and propped them up in a bowl full of water. I waited patiently (I thought) for WEEKS looking every day to see if the roots had started to grow. After a few weeks of no roots, I thought to myself “Maybe the seed is dead” so I threw it out and got another one. I tried the same thing again, and got the same results. So I took the seed and put it in a pot in soil. Maybe I needed soil to grow seeds. I left it outside the side door so I could check it every day. But 2 days later I came home to a neat hole in the dirt and no seed: one of those little critters that lives around my house, a squirrel or chipmunk, must have sniffed it out. What?? How could a little critter smell that seed under the dirt. So I tried again. Same outcome. I must have gone through this same routine two or three years in a row. And I still didn’t have an avocado plant.
This year, I vowed to try something different. I was DETERMINED to have a plant. I Googled information and read a few “how to”s. I chose my course of action: I took a seed and poked toothpicks into its sides, three toothpicks to make sure that it was securely propped up on top of the bowl. I made sure that there was always enough water in the bowl to have at least the bottom of the seed covered. The water got murky, but I never dumped the whole thing out. And I waited. For a long time. Weeks went by, then months. And nothing. The seed cracked, but nothing. Then one day, I picked the seed up out of the water to check it for the hundredth time, and looked in the crack, and saw it! A small white something! Could that be the beginnings of a root? I put it back in the water, and watched it every day, making sure that there was enough water to cover the seed, and now the white something. The seed had been there for so long that the toothpicks were starting to loosen, but it was still propped up on top of the bowl. And the roots grew. Beautiful curly white roots that would one day sink into soil and be the anchor for the plant. I waited for months after the roots started to grow, just to let them gain length and strength. They grew agonizingly slowly, but there was PROGRESS: nothing died.
And then the time came to plant it. I got a pot and soil, and carefully planted the seed in the soil, roots down, covered it up, put it on my kitchen counter under the window where there’s plenty of light, watered it well, and waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing. I dug into the soil to make sure the seed was still there and checked if anything was growing. Nothing. Maybe I had buried it too deep. So I made a little hollow above the seed and a few days later… a shoot! How wonderful! A tiny reddish shoot made its way through the dirt and to the light! It grew slowly, but it was growing! The tiny shoot bent towards the window, seeking the light. I turned it every day so it would grow straight, and every day, it bent towards the light. No leaves, no real form other than a stalk, but it is a living, growing shoot. The shoot is only a few inches long, but it is alive and it is growing. And one day it will be a beautiful plant with a trunk, branches and leaves, and maybe even an avocado!
Growing in Jesus, the Light of the world, is a bit like that avocado seed. We can immerse ourselves in the Word and surround ourselves with believers but sometimes we don’t see the results we want when we want them: so we get impatient, and change course, try something else, or think that we are defective and will never learn or grow. Here’s a thought: no one, you included, is so defective that God cannot reach you, touch you and heal you, through Jesus Christ. In fact, He delights in putting broken things back together. Isaiah prophesied about Jesus saying:
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
Because the Lord has anointed me
To bring good news to the afflicted;
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to captives
And freedom to prisoners;” (Isaiah 61:1)
You and I are exactly why Jesus came to this earth!
We, just like seeds, have to not only be in the right conditions to grow, but also be willing to absorb the nutrients provided and wait patiently for the results. If we get impatient, switch to something else, we may miss out on what God has in store for us. Sometimes, being in all that dirt and waiting for things to happen may just seem too difficult. And it is… when we try to do it alone. But when we do it with Jesus, it becomes easier and suddenly, we start growing! The growth can sometimes be small and almost imperceptible, like the tiny white beginnings of a root. Instead of the water only surrounding the seed, the seed starts to reach out into the water, growing roots into it and letting the water touch more of itself. The more we grow in Jesus Christ, the more we stretch out towards him and allow Him to change us, the more we can receive from Him. As our roots grow, and our foundation becomes firmly embedded in Jesus Christ, we start to reach up and out into the world. Our reach might at first be small and hesitant, as though feeling our way in the world, but then it starts to grow into a thing of beauty. When we grow in grace and walk in the love of God, when we allow Him to work in us and through us, we become more beautiful because we are HIS reflection. We take on His beauty, not our own.
There’s something else about that little avocado shoot: even as a tiny shoot less than an inch long, it grew in the direction of the light that came in through the kitchen window. That little shoot had to have the sun’s light to grow into what it was designed to be from the beginning. We are the same. As we start to grow, we too always seek the Son as our source of life and light; if we get turned around, He tugs on our hearts to turn back to Him. We cannot grow into the person He has called us to be without Him. Not only are we rooted in Him, but we also gravitate towards Him for our light and life. Jesus truly becomes our all in all.
Whether you need to have patience with yourself or with someone else, I hope the story of that little avocado seed will resonate with you. God has a plan for that little avocado seed, built right into the DNA of the seed, and He has a plan for you as well. May the light, love and grace of Jesus Christ surround you, nurture you and love you through all the dirt in your life so that you bloom in His marvelous light.
Living in the Light of the world 