The Seed Stuck
Some people search for excuses not knowing that they have positioned themselves outside shouting distance from their own cure.
I was sitting around a table this evening with some friends at a weekly recovery meeting. This one is a combination AA and Al-Anon. Both were birthed by the same founders and both share the twelve-step recovery process that has become the backbone to many other recovery programs as well. All of this is as it should be. What each group holds in common is a particular problem — something each participant needs to overcome themselves.
Those who have been around one of these groups of people long enough have come to understand how vital these programs are, not just to improving the quality of life, but often being the difference between life and death. I know this sounds a bit extreme but it isn’t. Often we hear the stories of friends we remember who thought it was now safe for them to drink again. They got it in their head that they had developed a self control that was never taught or encouraged. Some little idea, like a seed, got stuck in their head, and they plunged back into living hell.
In this particular meeting one of my friends spoke about seeds. He told us that just coming and sitting and listening opens up the possibility for a good seed to stick. Later the seed sprouts and grows eventually baring fruit. When this happens it is often difficult, if not impossible, to trace the successful outcome back to the original seeds that, for some reason, stuck.
Of course this idea about seeds is familiar to anyone who attended Sunday school as a child. It is the parable Jesus told about the sower who scattered seeds which then fell onto different soils. One soil was prepared to receive the seed. It had been weeded, tilled, and fertilized followed later by watering and protection from seed eating birds. Other locations where the seeds landed were not prepared and so nothing good came from the same exact seed.
Now applying this to my own life, I go back to recent posts having to do with practice and routines. To me this is soil and soul preparation. It is the daily disciplines that then allow good seeds to stick.
And what are seeds?
They are words of life; words of truth, correction, and encouragement, that eventually can grow to fruit baring levels — slower than we expect, faster than we deserve.
And at the deepest level, it explains why Jesus is called The Word. It can also be said he is the ultimate life changing seed. I hope that idea finds some stickiness in our lives today.
