The figure of the seed is very common in the Scriptures. All-natural life begins in germs and develops into fullness of form and strength. The same law prevails in the spiritual world. The kingdom of heaven begins in a heart as a very little seed and grows until it fills all the life. Every Word of God is a seed which encloses a living germ; plant it in the soil of faith and prayer and it will grow.
There is one passage, however, in which the figure of the seed is very striking: "Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart." "Light" stands for all spiritual blessing, and the thought is that our blessings are sown for us just as wheat-grains and flower-seeds are sown and that we gather the harvest from this sowing as we pluck flowers from garden or field or reap the wheat from the fields. God gives us our blessings not full formed but as seeds.
We may think of the divine sowing of the light we are now harvesting. We may say that before the world began, God sowed seeds of light in his thoughts and purposes of redemption. There are trees on the earth which are many centuries old; one who sits in their shadow is lost in thought as he tries to think of the day when the seeds were dropped from which these ancient trees sprang. But the blessings of divine life in whose shade we sit these days in our homes and sanctuaries, are older than the hoary mountains; they were thoughts and purposes of love in the heart of God in the immeasurable past and are but growing to ripeness in these later days.
Then we may say that our blessed Lord sowed seeds of light for us in his incarnation, in his obedience, in his sufferings and in his atoning death.
The tears that fell at Bethany and again on Mount Olive's brow, the blood-drops of anguish that stained the dewy grass in Gethsemane and those other life-drops that trickled down from the cross on Golgotha these were all seeds of light sown to yield peace, joy, comfort and eternal life to human souls along these centuries of Christian faith. Who can ever count up the blessings that the world has reaped from Christ's sowing?
Then we may say that God has sown light for us in his holy promises.
All divine Words are seeds; wherever they fall, beauty springs up. Deserts are made to blossom as the rose, wherever the Sower goes forth to sow. The promises were spoken ages since, and put down in the inspired book, and have been preserved, and now in these late times they bring cheer and hope to weary men who without them would perish in the darkness.
But there are more practical uses of the figure. A seed is a germ. When, therefore, we say that God has sown the light for us, we mean that he gives us our blessings in germ, not in full form that they come to us, not developed into completeness of beauty but as seeds which we must plant, waiting, sometimes waiting long for them to grow into loveliness.
A seed does not manifest all the beauty of the life that is folded up within it. We see only a little, brown and unsightly hull which gives no prophecy of anything so beautiful as springs from it when it has been planted. These facts in nature have their analogies in the seeds of spiritual blessing which God sows for us. The blessing does not appear; what does appear is often unlovely in its form, giving in itself no promise of good. Yet it is a seed carrying in it the potency of life, and the possibilities of great blessing.
[J. R. Miller]
Psalm 97:11 ... Light is sown for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart.
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