Sprouting Mustard Seeds

On Sunday, my pastor is away.  My spouse will preach a sermon my spouse has written.  I'll have the children's sermon.  A few weeks ago, I found a fairly cheap jar of mustard seeds.  So each child will get a baggy of mustard seeds.  We'll talk about the miraculous nature of plants:  from such a tiny pod, a big plant can grow.

My spouse has been tending some seedlings for several weeks.  They're not mustard plants, but they'll help with the message.

This week I decided it would be cool if we had something in between seed and seedling.  So I'm trying to sprout some of the mustard seeds.  I've spread some seeds between layers of damp paper towels.  We'll see what happens.  I may have waited until too late in the week.  It may not be possible to sprout seeds that one finds in the spice rack.

I plan to talk about Christians as seeds that can grow into sturdy plants.  I plan to talk about the things that support that growth.  We'll have seeds in a baggy--will they grow like that?  No.  They need soil, water, and sun.  I expect that thinking about how plants grow will be news to some of them, while some of them will have watched this process in family gardens.  I'm fairly sure that few of them will have been to a farm or any other large-size operation--there aren't many left in our area.

In the meantime, I'm feeling a bit of that feeling of wonder that comes from planting seeds.  I move my plate of damp paper towel layers from the table that gets a slant of the morning light to the shady counter because a website said that the mustard seeds won't sprout with very much direct light.  I wonder what's going on down there in those damp paper towels.  I feel a strange urge to sing to these seeds.

Yesterday as I moved the plate, I took a look out of my kitchen window.  I saw a backyard full of butterflies framed by my small window over the sink.  My spouse has planted all sort of butterfly attracting plants, so it's not quite the miracle it may sound.  Still, I saw several colors of butterflies, a yellow hibiscus plant, the blazing glory of the dwarf Poinciana tree, and some pale pink Bougainvillea flowers.  Breathtaking.

Or, as my friend's children used to exclaim, "Great show, God!"