SUMMER IS HERE!

And the living is marvelous. Green grass, red fawns, yellow dandelions, and other bee-you-tee-ful flowers. The lupines are my favorite, and this year they’re extra tall. It’s time to spend time outside enjoying God’s creation. It offers therapy and healing, and never ceases to bring a smile.


ETERNAL PERSPECTIVES by Sally Bair

Seeds that Multiply

The beautiful Wild Lupine plants are in full bloom. One plant spike contains dozens of five-petaled flowers all the way from stem to tip, which can be as long as twelve inches. They’re so abundant that the roadsides and fields are a blue and pink feast to the eyes.

Lupines are not only pleasing to the eye, they offer other benefits as well. They give nectar to the endangered Karna blue butterfly. In fact, the lupine is that caterpillar’s only host plant. The lupine, a legume plant, also restores nitrogen to the soil. Some of the 200-plus species of lupine are referred to as green manure.

Each flower from one lupine plant can produce between ten and twenty seeds. It’s mind-boggling to imagine how many more lupines can be reproduced from a single plant. If not for insect predators, we would see lupines everywhere. But that’s true of many plants, which exist to reproduce more of their kind.

Jesus told a parable about seeds, recorded in Matthew 13, that reminds me of the life of a lupine plant. Jesus is the One who sows the seed through His Word and through the words and deeds of us Christian believers. He uses us to plant good seeds along the roadsides and in the field of the world. But we can sow His seeds of love only if the soil of our own heart produces attractive and beneficial crops like lupine.

Galatians 5:19-20 says: “the fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.” Such fruit is what all Christians should ask for, strive for, and live for, so the seeds we sow in the name of Jesus will reproduce good fruit in others. The more we do that, the more seeds of God’s love and joy and peace we can spread throughout our world.

Every day God gives us the opportunity to sow good seeds that will produce an abundant crop of beautiful and useful soul-food, like the lupine. Every day God gives us the opportunity to keep bad seeds—worry, envy, unbelief, discontent, and pride—from getting mixed in with the good. The day will come when He will gather His harvest. As with any crop, the harvest will entail getting rid of the fruit of bad seed. Only the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s seed will last.

Lord, we look toward the day of Your harvest, when “the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” (Matthew 13:43) Thank You for the privilege of planting seeds of love, joy, and peace in the world. In Jesus’ name, amen.