The Power of Heirloom Seed

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

One of our associate pastors, Pastor Scott, brought the message on Memorial Day Sunday...which also happened to be Pentecost.    His word challenged me on several areas and he said a thing during the second service that was paradigm shifting for me...a paradigm that I needed shifting.

But, as a good message does, it also sparked  creative connections in my spirit.  He talked a little bit about heirloom seed at one point...and connections started firing off.

My grandmother, whose 110th birthday would also have been that Sunday, was a farm wife from the depression generation who never wasted ANYTHING.  Most of her food was produced on her farm.

Although as she grew older they discontinued the livestock (hogs, chickens, a milk cow), she maintained her magnificent vegetable gardens and flower beds up until the last year of her life.  There were vegetables in that garden that were planted from her own heirloom seed.  

I remember the seed from green beans and tomatoes; there may have been others.  In between services, I shared a story with Pastor Scott about Grandma's tomato seed...

In the late 60's and 70's, Grandma was an active participant in the Indiana State Fair.  One of the things she entered was a plate of her cherry tomatoes...raised from her own seed, they were very small, very red, perfectly round and quite tasty.  They won awards at the Fair.

The year after she died, My Sweet Babboo, the Princess (who was about a year and half old at the time) and I managed to get to Indiana during the State Fair, and we went with my folks.  At one point, Dad commented that we needed to go to the Horticulture Building to see if any of Grandma's tomatoes were there.  I couldn't understand how Grandma's tomatoes could be there, but he told us that every year that Grandma won prizes for her tomatoes, by the end of the fair there were no tomatoes left on her exhibit plate.  All of them...20 or so...had been pinched and carried off by other folks.  And, as the years went on, the number of other entries of very small, very round, very red cherry tomatoes steadily increased.  Sure enough, when we went by the exhibit, there were several plates of those very tomatoes.  Grandma's seed was still producing fruit, even though she was gone.

Y'see, that's what heirloom seed does.  It is not a hybrid; its DNA does not change from one generation to the next.  But seed must be saved from each generation; if all the produce from one generation is consumed, there will be none left to plant the next generation.

This requires diligent and intentional action;  saving seed doesn't happen unless a deliberate decision is made to collect and process the fruit for seed.  Then the seed has to be carefully stored until the next growing season...protected from moisture, rodents and insects, and calamity (such as a fire).  Such valuable seed is only planted in ground that has been carefully prepared to receive it;  it is never thrown helter-skelter out in the wild to see if it will take root and grow.

Now, consider all this in the light of Luke 8:11...The seed is the Word of God.

It does not change from one generation to the next.
It must be intentionally sown into each generation and  preserved for the next.
It continues to bring fruit generation after generation.

What am I doing in my own life to cultivate and preserve the heirloom seed?  How am I sowing that seed into the next generation?