My garden is my place of quiet and peacefulness.  Yesterday I brought in the top of a lettuce plant that had gone to seed and this morning I was taking off the tiny flowers and opening them up.  The tiny seeds inside fell into the paper bag.  Soon there were enough seeds in the little bag to plant plenty of lettuce in next summer’s garden.

One lettuce plant produces enough seeds to create ten future gardens.  Imagine how many gardens could be created with all of the seeds from all of the plants in the garden!  God is amazing.  He put enough seeds in one plant to create an abundance of new plants.  It’s a miracle.

Think of a maple tree.  Each maple has thousands of tiny helicopters on it that will float down to earth and potentially become more maple trees.  He gave us enough seed to make up for all the possibilities.  Seeds falling on rocks.  Seeds being eaten by squirrels.  Seeds being washed away by rain.  Even with all of the destruction that can happen to each maple seed, in the spring we find our yard filled with tiny maple seedlings after a few spring rains.  And no matter how I clean up my garden, in the spring I find random lettuce plants growing here or there, tiny tomato seedlings sprouting where I don’t want them any more.  About fifteen years ago, I planted some mustard green seeds.  Every year those mustard greens still show up.  They never sprout in exactly the same place, but they faithfully make an appearance wherever the wind has blown them.

As I open each miniature seed pod and scrape out the seeds, it is impossible not to realize that these seeds represent hope.  They are the hope of a successful garden, not this year, but next.  They are the hope of the return of spring even before winter has arrived.  They are the hope of new life, of all things good, of things even bigger and better than this year.  Thank God for hope.  Thank God for the tiny seeds that anchor us in the faith and knowledge that life will go on.  Winter does not last forever.  Hardships will cease. Spring will come.

Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature – his eternal power and divine character – have been clearly perceptible through what he has made.  (Romans 1:19)