🎧 Listen to this Rooted Moment → Episode 110: The Seeds I Forgot

Right before I left for Romania, a friend handed me a little packet of okra seeds. And I did the laziest possible thing with them. On my way out the door, suitcase practically in hand, I tossed them into the dirt. I didn’t water them in. I didn’t fuss over the spacing or the soil. I threw them down, got on a plane, and left the country for a month.

And friend — I came home to okra trees. Huge, healthy, gorgeous plants, deep green leaves with burgundy running down the stalks, giant tender pods already on them. The seeds I abandoned had become the healthiest thing in my whole garden.

A verse rose up in me right there in the heat:

“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” — 1 Corinthians 3:6–7

Only God gives the growth.

My okra preached the whole sermon to me. If the harvest depended on my effort — my watering, my vigilance, my being there — those abandoned seeds should have been the first thing to fail. Instead they thrived. On neglect. On heat. On a whole month of me being on the other side of the world. The growing was never mine to do. It happened without me, because it was never up to me in the first place.

I wonder if you needed that today as much as I did. Because so many of us are living like the growth depends on our grip. Like if we step back, if we go quiet for a season, if we can’t tend the way we want to, everything we’ve planted will fall apart. So we water and water and water, afraid to stop.

But it isn’t up to your grip. It never was. The God who grew my okra while I slept in another time zone is the same God tending the seeds you planted in your children, your marriage, your work, your quiet prayers. He was giving the growth the whole time you weren’t watching. He doesn’t need your grip to keep His promises. He only asks for your faithfulness in the planting — and He gives the growth Himself.

So hold out your hand a moment and loosen it. Say the true thing: I planted, and I water — but You give the growth. Let that be enough today.

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🎧 Listen to the full Rooted Moment → Episode 110: The Seeds I Forgot

My book Rooted in Grace is yours, free, at rootedingrace.me — a gentle companion for meeting God in the ordinary garden of your everyday life. And if you’re worn down from trying to water a whole garden by yourself, Rooted Reset ($25) is a five-day, mostly quiet email journey to help you loosen your grip and let your own soul be tended. Also at rootedingrace.me.

The Rooted in Grace paperback and the 30-Day Rooted in Grace Devotional are on Amazon — search “Rooted in Grace.”

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