Fresh Lettuce
By Christopher Pan, Executive Director
Back in the spring, during the first lock-down, my father-in-law decided to grow his own lettuce. He spent a few days building a raised planter box from scratch. Then he took another few days to get some soil from the store. Then he got a variety of seeds. He planted the seeds and waited. At one point, he covered the tiny plants that were growing with a plastic sheet so the sun wouldn’t be too hot.
Then he waited. And lo and behold, after a while, there was a whole planter box full of a variety of lettuce! These last few months, we’ve been eating fresh lettuce, grown right in the driveway. It’s been particularly cool to witness this unfold right before my eyes for two reasons:
First, I didn’t do anything, and I get to eat delicious fresh lettuce. Second, there is something absolutely inexplicable about the growth of plants. One day, they are tiny. A few days or weeks would go by, I wouldn’t be paying attention, and then all of a sudden, there’s lettuce. It is a complete and total mystery to me how it all happens.
It reminds of this parable that Jesus tells in Mark 4:26-29:
Jesus also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
There is a mystery to growth not just for plants but for ourselves and for the Kingdom of God too. I’m usually not very in touch with mystery – I like clear inputs and outputs, logical reasoning, clear explanations. But watching the lettuce grow (and eating the lettuce!), it’s nice to remind myself to embrace the mystery. God is growing lettuce, and He’s growing me, and us, and His kingdom, and I “do not know how.” But it’s still happening. In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, he writes, “Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries.”
Prayer: God, may You grow us, and grow Your Kingdom. We do not know how. But may we embrace and be faithful stewards of Your mysteries. In Jesus name, Amen.
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