Finding seeds of hope in dry seasons

By Jean Floyd |

Jean and Tony’s journey with SIM began in 1997 after watching a video about ministry work in Paraguay. Inspired by the idea that church planting is simply using the skills God has given to build relationships and share the gospel, they felt called to take part. With Tony’s carpentry skills and Jean’s gift for teaching English, they knew they had something to offer. Arriving in Paraguay on December 31st 1997, they spent the next 25 years immersed in the adventure of church planting and raising their three sons in a rural community.

Jean’s piece today comes from a season of brokenness, where God met her in the depths of pain and spoke into her heart. In our lament, the safest place we are is with Jesus. It’s here, when we sit with him in our grief, that his whispers are the loudest. He hears us, welcomes our cries, knows our pain, and restores us. 

This is the God we long to make known and the gospel we are called to share.

For now, Jean and Tony are based in the US, where they are working with church planters around the SIM world to help them network and to equip them for more effective ministry in their respective regions. They stay involved with the SIM Paraguay team in a myriad of ways.

Image credit:  Sunshine-Poschinger from Getty Images

I am so grateful for the beautiful place where we get to live for this season of our lives. In the spring I planted some zinnia and marigold seeds in a garden space that we cleared. The flowers did much better than any vegetables that we planted. In fact, they were quite prolific.

They added even more colour to the wildflowers in the field of that little valley and a bright border between the yard and the garden. The flowers lasted well into the fall, adding vivid splashes of gold and orange and pink and red to the languishing landscape as the leaves started to fall off the trees.

Now I look at the landscape and everything is completely brown and dry. It looks like there is nothing left and no hope for beauty to come from this place.

As the flowers were drying up, I tried to harvest the seeds so that they could be planted again next year. At the beginning of fall I realised that even though the flower was wilting, it was still not ready to release its seeds. I couldn't get the seeds out of the flowers while there was any green still left.

Image credit: AndreaObzerova from Getty Images

But I have found now that all the flowers are completely brown and dry, the heads of the flowers are more relaxed and open and crumble easily in my hands, and the seeds fall out effortlessly. They are ready to be planted again in the Spring.

There is potential for more beauty in the future! Now I am harvesting seeds of hope!

As I gathered the seeds in the bleak and baren but serene landscape, I pondered how our lives are kind of like these flowers. Just when we think things look the most grim and impossible is when seeds are released, and hope is birthed.

Sometimes when the pain seems the worst, relaxing and loosening our grip on our dreams is the very thing needed to release seeds of hope for the future. And some- times when things look the deadest and most impossible, all brown and dried up, is when seeds can be released that will provide new life and new beauty in the future from that very bareness.

Perhaps we need to be more patient with our circumstances and wait as things get browner and drier. Perhaps we need to relax and open up and be willing to be crumbled in God's gentle hands in order to release seeds of hope for the future.

From the packet of marigold seeds that I planted, I got maybe 15 plants that I put out in our garden last spring. Not every seed grew to a mature plant. But those plants that grew have produced a thousand fold the seeds that were planted!

Perhaps God is wanting to do something in you, too. Perhaps He is allowing a time of death or dryness, but perhaps that time will facilitate you releasing seeds that will produce a thousand times what would have been otherwise. And then those plants will again produce seeds a thousand times.

Let's trust God when everything around us looks dead and dry and barren. Let's have hope that seeds are being released and things will once again be filled with beauty and colour.

"We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield." Ps 33:20 NIV

Prayer 

• Pray for the faith to trust God even in seasons of barrenness and brokenness, knowing that he is at work, releasing seeds of hope that will bring future growth and beauty.