Seeds of Hope

Seeds are so amazing...

something so small grows into something so beautiful, and so full of life, and the ability to offer more life.

In C. Thomas Davis's book Fields of the Fatherless, he wrote "One of the most significant seeds we can ever plant-especially in the life of someone who is fatherless-is the seed of hope. A field has no hope of a future crop without the planting of a seed."

I love people's stories...everyone has one. Some stories are happy, others so sad. But I have seen that if each person will allow the LORD to come in to their stories, He does something always amazing. The LORD redeems, brings life, to what the enemy of our souls intended to kill, steal or destroy in us; from death to life, what was stolen is replaced with even more, and what was destroyed is rebuilt beyond imagining. I spent the weekend listening to several women share testimonies of abandonment by a mother, but most often their fathers (birth fathers at that); stories of rape, abortions, drug and alcohol addictions, physical abuses that are hard to imagine, fear and anger. Their stories were hard to hear, until it gets to the part where someone in their lives listened to their stories, felt compassion and offered seeds of hope. With that hope their stories began to change.

I sat on an airplane going to Africa to bring home our daughter and at one of the stops I noticed a younger African man. He was sitting alone, but smiled politely and said hello. As we talked I respectfully asked him about his life during the war in Liberia. First he was surprised that I knew as much as I do, since most Americans he had met didn't know anything about his country. I found out he had hidden in the jungles to escape being captured for the army; he had lost several of his family members to death; he had somehow gotten to America and drives semi-trucks across the US to make money to send to Liberia to his remaining family; and this was his first time to go home in years. When it was time to get back in our seats, I went back to my place by a young missionary from England. He had heard my conversation with the young man and said "wow, he has come through a lot". All I could say was "Everyone has a story".

The women who have been hurt and abandoned right in my own church, the homeless in my town, the war refugees in another country...we all have a story, and the reason I think it is important to listen to each others stories is that we show value, first by caring, and second, because we can offer the seeds of hope to each other.

As C Thomas Davis asks in his book "Will you plant a seed of hope in lives that have been stripped bare by the misery of the world?"