Daily Archives: March 23, 2013

A Lenten Devotional for Day 34: Saturday, March 23, 2013

Planters

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 3:6-10 (NRSV) I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.

Devotion: Today, I met with my district mentor, Rev. Judy Hunt, at White’s Chapel UMC in Southlake. As part of the UMC ordination candidacy process, I am assigned a mentor and I’m required to meet with this mentor for a minimum of 4 times a year. The process is very rigorous, selective, and lengthy and not everyone reaches the end of the tunnel. Nevertheless, the process and system are in place for a purpose.

My meeting with my mentor, in part, is to check-in with how I’m doing in ministry and life. On this particular meeting, I was excited to share with Judy my current involvement with various ministries at Martin, including our Evangelism Spring theme of Come Grow With Us in Faith & that We’re all Seeds in God’s hands.

Judy saw that I had picked up one of their devotional book and said that I should check out today’s devotional because it talked about seeds. Later in the evening as I was reading the devotional, I immediately connect it to my life. The authors talked about how “a life of faith is a life of seed-planting.” And most of the time, the planter is not around to see the seeds bear fruits. I couldn’t agree more. I thought of how it was never my intention or goal to go into seminary and ministry. But one thing led to another and I ended up in seminary, still with no plans of going into ministry, but with the aspiration to learn about the history of Christianity and my faith origin. It was in seminary that I began to realize that I didn’t end up in the classroom by serendipity and that I wasn’t just there to get an education or to fulfill my inquisitive mind. Rather, God was calling me into ministry, a seed that was planted years ago, and had taken roots in my family tree. You see many of my family members are in ministry, in the Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga, either working as pastors of a church, an educator for the church, have retired, or had a life working for the church. My grandparents were ministers and my great-grandparents and great great-grandparents were placed into exile when Christianity first arrived in Tonga because they chose to follow the new religion, because they chose to follow Christ.

The seeds that my parents and family instilled in my life growing up years ago are bearing fruits. While I wish that they were alive today, I’m grateful for their seed planting. Likewise, we’re doing the same in others’ lives, planting seeds. Maybe we’ll be around to see it bear fruit or maybe we won’t. But God pushes us forward to plant anyways and not be so eager to see the results. May we be reminded that planting seeds requires time to grow. This Lenten season, may you continue to grow in your faith, and may you continue to plant seeds in someone else’s as we remember our Lord who calls us to be planters.

Prayer: Creator God, Thank you for the seeds that you have planted in people’s lives. Thank you for making it grow. Amen

*Originally published as part of a devotional booklet that I compiled and edited for Martin United Methodist Church.

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