Planting

Back in June, one of the Sunday Gospel readings was about the mustard seed. As we talked about it in Bible class, Ed mentioned that some of the older pastors would refer to funerals/burials as "planting" someone.

When Dad died, I was right in the midst of planting most of the garden. My chart to show what's planted where, and when I planted it, records most everything having been planted the day or two before I left to go to my folks'. Gary planted the asparagus while I was gone. I planted more when I came home after the funeral.

Ed also mentioned in Bible class that we plant the seed and go away and know it will come up. Boy, after my spring, I'm not so sure. None of my first planting of corn came up. Only one vine of my first planting of cucumbers came up, and none of the second planting. None of my first planting of cantaloupe came up. It was all looking pretty hopeless out in my garden.

So when we bought some fresh corn seed (the first planting had been 10-yr-old seed) and soaked some more old cantaloupe seed in water before replanting, I was surprised to see anything come up. Look! It works! Seeds in dirt actually DO something! How 'bout that!

When you're in the midst of planting your seeds in your garden, it makes you think about "planting" the bodies of your loved ones in the dirt too. If my raised beds today can look like nuthin' but a naked stretch of dirt, there is nothing to prove that in a week or so there will be tiny little lines of green poking through the soil. And nothing to make me understand that in a month I'll be wishing I had spread out the plants a little further apart because they got so big all of a sudden. (That's assuming, of course, that our coldest-summer-on-record releases its chilly grip for a few days here and there. Oh wait, I'm tending toward a rant on global warming again, aren't I? Okay, back to the analogy.) Not much to see when the loved one's body is planted. No proof of a resurrection. And not even the experience of what happened before, as in having seen last year's garden seeds grow. All we have is God's word on it. But the seed will come out of the ground and will bear fruit, and it will be far more exciting than when we see the little row of green in the garden (even though it's pretty thrilling when another plant pops up!).