My Useless Work

When I went to school, they pressed a handful of seeds into my hand, taught me how to scatter them, and told me to do it faithfully. Then someone pointed me in the direction of dry, hardened, thorny ground, and told me to scatter over that bit.

I scattered my seeds, and watched them blow away.

The next week, I scattered my seeds, and watched them blow away

And the week after that, I scattered my seeds, and watched them blow away.

And I did this almost three hundred times.

Finally, I hung up my bag of seeds, and walked away from that patch of useless ground and my useless work there. I left to pursue my studies of ancient farming practices.

Now, I've never fancied myself much of a farmer. I'm a much better student than I am a farmer, and I am making it my mission in life to help people to see why ancient farming practices matter. But I believe that every Christian has those seeds in their hand, and I believe that we are all supposed to scatter our seeds faithfully. I believed that then, and I still do. But it just seemed so often like wasted time, like useless, fruitless work. And I've spent a lot of time wondering what any of it meant, if any of it mattered.

Tonight, though, I was reminded that I judge too quickly. I am very human, and I have a very short view of things. And those three hundred nights that I sat and watched seeds blow away, what I did not, and could not, account for was every seed. There were a few that stuck. And today if you walked past that hard and thorny patch of ground, you would see a place that has blossomed into bright and beautiful flower. A place that is unmistakably, undeniably alive. Dozens of people have come along and watered and weeded and nurtured and pruned.

There are times that it's more complicated than “I planted; Apollos watered; God gave growth.” Sometimes it's “I planted and planted and planted and planted, and then months and months of watering and nurturing happened thanks to a whole team of crop specialists, and God gave growth.

And some people never get to see it. Some people die, never seeing any fruit for labour much longer and more invested than was mine. I'm one of the lucky ones, to see it as I have. But that flower, that growth, that oasis in a desert place – that is why we scatter seeds. That is the “why” behind the world's most useful, seemingly useless work.