Want to see a miracle? Try this. Take a seed the size of a freckle. Put it under several inches of dirt. Give it enough water, light, and fertilizer. And get ready. A mountain will be moved. It doesn’t matter that the ground is a zillion times the weight of the seed. The seed will push it back.
Every spring, dreamers around the world plant tiny hopes in overturned soil. And every spring, their hopes press against impossible odds and blossom.
Never underestimate the power of a seed.
As far as I know, James, the epistle writer, wasn’t a farmer. But he knew the power of a seed sown in fertile soil.
“Those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of goodness.”1
The principle for peace is the same as the principle for crops: Never underestimate the power of a seed.
The story of Heinz is a good example. Europe, 1934. Hitler’s plague of anti-Semitism was infecting a continent. Some would escape it. Some would die from it. But eleven-year-old Heinz would learn from it. He would learn the power of sowing seeds of peace.
Heinz was a Jew.
The Bavarian village of Furth, where Heinz lived, was being overrun by Hitler’s young thugs. Heinz’s father, a schoolteacher, lost his job. Recreational activities ceased. Tension mounted on the streets.
The Jewish families clutched the traditions that held them together—the observance of the Sabbath, of Rosh Hashanah, of Yom Kippur. Old ways took on new significance. As the clouds of persecution swelled and blackened, these ancient precepts were a precious cleft in a mighty rock.
And as the streets became a battleground, such security meant survival.
Hitler youth roamed the neighborhoods looking for trouble. Young Heinz learned to keep his eyes open. When he saw a band of troublemakers, he would step to the other side of the street. Sometimes he would escape a fight—sometimes not.
One day, in 1934, a pivotal confrontation occurred. Heinz found himself face-to-face with a Hitler bully. A beating appeared inevitable. This time, however, he walked away unhurt—not because of what he did, but because of what he said. He didn’t fight back; he spoke up. He convinced the troublemakers that a fight was not necessary. His words kept battle at bay.
And Heinz saw firsthand how the tongue can create peace.
He learned the skill of using words to avoid conflict. And for a young Jew in Hitler-ridden Europe, that skill had many opportunities to be honed.
Fortunately, Heinz’s family escaped from Bavaria and made their way to America. Later in life, he would downplay the impact those adolescent experiences had on his development.
But one has to wonder. For after Heinz grew up, his name became synonymous with peace negotiations. His legacy became that of a bridge builder. Somewhere he had learned the power of the properly placed word of peace. And one has to wonder if his training didn’t come on the streets of Bavaria.
You don’t know him as Heinz. You know him by his Anglicized name, Henry. Henry Kissinger.2
Never underestimate the power of a seed.
* * * * *
How good are you at sowing seeds of peace?
You may not be called on to ward off international conflict, but you will have opportunities to do something more vital: to bring inner peace to troubled hearts.
Jesus modeled this. We don’t see him settling many disputes or negotiating conflicts. But we do see him cultivating inward harmony through acts of love:
Washing the feet of men he knew would betray him,
Having lunch with a corrupt tax official,
Honoring the sinful woman whom society had scorned.
He built bridges by healing hurts. He prevented conflict by touching the interior. He cultivated harmony by sowing seeds of peace in fertile hearts.
Do me a favor. Pause for a moment and think about the people who make up your world. Take a stroll through the gallery of faces that are significant to you. Mentally flip through the scrapbook of snapshots featuring those you deal with often.
Can you see their faces? Your spouse. Your best friend. Your golf buddies. Your friends at PTA. Your kids. Your aunt across the country. Your neighbor across the street. The receptionist at work. The new secretary in the next office. Freeze-frame those mental images for a moment while I tell you how some of them are felling.
I went to our family doctor not long ago. I went for my first check-up since the one required for high school football seventeen years ago.
Since I was way overdue, I ordered the works. One nurse put me on a table and stuck little cold suction cups to my chest. Another nurse wrapped a heavy band around my arm and squeezed a black bulb until my arm tingled. Then they pricked my finger (which always hurts) and told me to fill up a cup (which is always awkward). Then, with all the preliminaries done, they put me in a room and told me to take off my shirt and wait on the doctor.
There is something about being poked, pushed, measured, and drained that makes you feel like a head of lettuce in the produce department. I sat on a tiny stool and stared at the wall.
May I tell you something you know, but may have forgotten? Somebody in your world feels like I felt in that office. The daily push and shove of the world has a way of leaving us worked over and worn out. Someone in your gallery of people is sitting on a cold aluminum stool of insecurity, clutching the backside of a hospital gown for fear of exposing what little pride he or she has left. And that person desperately needs a word of peace.
Someone needs you to do for them what Dr. Jim did for me.
Jim is a small-town doctor in a big city. He still remembers names and keeps pictures of babies he delivered on his office bulletin board. And though you know he’s busy, he makes you feel you are his only patient.
After a bit of small talk and few questions about my medical history, he put down my file and said, “Let me take off my doctor hat for a minute and talk to you as a friend.”
The chat lasted maybe five minutes. He asked me about my family. He asked me about my work load. He asked me about my stress. He told me he thought I was doing a good job at the church and that he loved to read my books.
Nothing profound, nothing probing. He went no deeper than I allowed. But I had the feeling he would have gone to the bottom of the pit with me had I needed him to.
After those few minutes, Dr. Jim went about his task of tapping my knee with his rubber hammer, staring down my throat, looking in my ear, and listening to my chest. When he was all done, as I was buttoning up my shirt, he took his doctor hat off again and reminded me not carry the world on my shoulders. “And be sure to love your wife and hug those kids, because when it all boils down to it, you’re not much without them.”
“Thanks, Jim,” I said.
And he walked out as quickly as he’d come in—a seed sower in a physician’s smock.
* * * * *
Want to see a miracle? Plant a word of love heart-deep in a person’s life. Nurture it with a smile and a prayer, and watch what happens.
An employee gets a compliment. A wife receives a bouquet of flowers. A cake is baked and carried next door. A widow is hugged. A gas-station attendant is honored. A preacher is praised.
Sowing seeds of peace is like sowing beans. You don’t know why it works; you just know it does. Seeds are planted, and topsoils of hurt are shoved away.
Don’t forget the principle. Never underestimate the power of a seed.
God didn’t. When his kingdom was ravaged and his people had forgotten his name, he planted his seed.
When the soil of the human heart had grown crusty, he planted his seed. When religion had become a ritual and the temple a trading post, he planted his seed.
Want to see a miracle? Watch him as he places the seed of his own self in the fertile womb of a Jewish girl.
Up it grew, “like a tender green shoot, sprouting from a root in dry and sterile ground.”3
The stones of legalism that burdened backs.
The stones of oppression that broke bones.
The stones of prejudice that fenced out the needy.
But it was the final stone that proved to be the supreme test of the seed. The stone of death—rolled by humans and sealed by Satan in front of the tomb. For a moment it appeared the seed would be stuck in the earth. For a moment, it looked like this rock was too big to be budged.
But then, somewhere in the heart of the earth, the seed of God stirred, shoved, and sprouted. The ground trembled, and the rock of the tomb tumbled. And the flower of Easter blossomed.
Never underestimate the power of a seed.