By Bruce Smith
The inspiration for this meditation came from a morning walk some years ago in the field behind our house back in New York.
The north side of our field was bordered by mature oak trees and, at the right time of year, each step landed on acorns that would crunch under your feet. Late August was just the beginning of that right time so the acorns were new and relatively sparse. They were a new addition to the scene so I picked one up and took a good look at it.
It was just an acorn. The nut still had a greenish tinge rather than the chestnut color that would appear later. The cute, textured cap was still firmly attached with even a bit of stem giving it a jaunty look. While new for this season it was, after all, just another acorn. Yet it was something more – a token of hope, an article of faith and that mind-boggling potential to become one of those imposing woody sentinels to my side. It conveyed all that a seed and the sowing of seeds represents in the great cycle of nature and in our lives as disciples.
An acorn is at heart nothing more than a specialized seed and seeds appear several times in Scripture. One with which you are probably familiar is that of the sower in Matthew 13:3-9. The sower went out and scattered his seeds somewhat indiscriminately. Our oak trees were like that sower. Like the sower’s seeds, some acorns are cracked under foot, many are eaten by the busy squirrels, others become small trees that are crowded out or munched by deer. Yet, like the Scriptural story, a few fall in spots where they become trees and yield many thousand-fold more acorns over the course of their long lives.
I don’t know as any of us would call ourselves as imposing as oak trees but as we work here, in our lives and at home we, too, can be dropping acorn “seeds.” We are not asked to be particularly discriminating about where we drop them and we may not have much choice. And we are not held responsible for the results. God takes care of that. The important thing is to be as determined, faithful and hopeful, as those oak trees and Matthew’s sower were, about dropping those acorns along the way.
Paul writing to the Corinthians carries this theme of sowing generously forward. “Whosoever sows sparingly will reap sparingly and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.” And later, “Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.” These sentences contain our only instructions for sowing. There is nothing about choosing a field, preparing the ground, or irrigating. No – the only instruction is to sow generously with a hint that we should focus on the poor. There is also a promise that we will be amply supplied with more than enough to help us with the sowing.
This week we might focus on sowing seeds of hope and faith on the ground we find. Sometimes the response seems like no response at all – like dry, hard packed earth. Sometimes we suspect that the result we see will only be temporary and that hope and faith will be choked by the brambles of everyday life. But then there are responses whose results we may never see but which will be as sturdy and imposing as those oak trees at the field’s edge. We are not told which is which but we are told to sow as generously as the oaks drop acorns. And, crunching nuts as I walk beneath them, it sometimes seems as though their supply is as inexhaustible as God’s support for us.
May we sow richly with the seeds that God gives us.