While I was listening to the readings during church this morning my mind drifted, as usual. I started thinking about two girls who have just started high school this year and at the same time pulled away from church. I am sad to lose them, both because I want to build something meaningful and supportive for high school kids and because I have known both of them a very long time and care for them as the unique young ladies they are. I was thinking about how one, in particular, knew her way around the Bible and shared some interesting and deep insights many times. They at times have both had an enthusiasm for being at church and for caring for one another. Now they seem to have neither. I have felt demoralized over their departure as we turned the corner of having enough high school-aged kids to be able to have a Sunday morning class and maybe some other activities to try to build some synergy within the group. Then, beyond my control, they’ve gone. And then I realized that the best I can do is to continue to care for them, even from afar, and let God be there to help them grow.
I have planted seeds. Each Sunday in Sunday school I talk about God and Jesus and Bible history and try to link together meaning and love and grace. And if each week, or even occasionally, the kids walk away with something that sticks in their minds and souls, whether they intended for it to or not, that’s a seed. The girls contain the seeds that countless Sunday school teachers and loved ones have planted. They also contain seeds of doubt and discord. And now, by the grace of God, they go out to tend their own gardens and, hopefully, let God do some tending, too. They may let many of those seeds lay dormant for years–whether seeds leading to the growth of flowers or weeds. And they may think they are on their own to decide what to grow and what to pluck out. But I pray the seed of the Holy Spirit, out of their control, grows within them and at the right time gives them the “aha” that I had, a knowledge, partial though it may be, of the role God intends me to play in this world, for God’s own good. I have to turn the watering and growing over to these girls and to God.
