Confidence in the Seed

As I begin today's FTM thought I want to make sure I clarify a point I often have made in the past. By calling I am an educator or what most would call a teacher. Over the years many of my Flat Tire thoughts have had suggestions or themes towards "teachers". This blog is not exclusive to those that garner a paycheck for their services in the field of education. My thought is we are all teachers, young children are teachers to babies, those that are parents are teachers to their children, you in the business office or on the manufacturing floor are teaching those you work with each day. You are a teacher to the complete stranger you pass on the street each day as they watch your actions, listen to your words, and gain an understanding of what you stand for and what motivates your choices in life. So if I ever speak of teachers in this blog understand I am talking to YOU. Just wanted to clarify that point! On with the show!
    Before the advent of modern farming techniques and equipment the method of spreading seeds did not have quite the same level of ingenuity involved during planting season. In the Middle East during the life of Jesus the common practice of those planting the seeds was more of a scatter and spread method that really wouldn't have qualified as a scientific approach compared to the clean, crisp rows that fill our fields and farms today. Yet, the scatter and spread method provided Jesus with the parable of the sower and the seed found in Matthew 13:3-8 and the topic for today's FTM thought.
     We know the context of the parable Jesus shared, when the farmer went out to scatter (plant) his seed some landed on the surface rocks and was snatched up by the birds, some fell on rocky soil and couldn't get rooted, some amongst the thrones where they were choked out, and then some of the seed fell onto the good soil and produced an abundant harvest. Later in the same chapter Jesus goes on to explain the parable and how it correlates to man and how we receive the Word of God and how we apply it to our lives and the lives of others. Wonderful application there, but I'm more interested in the method of the sower today for our purposes. The sower's job was to sow the seed, the actual outcome of that seed was not necessarily due to the sower, the real job to be done lands on the back of the seed that was planted. Sure the sower could have chosen to only spread the seed in one small corner of the field where he knew the land would be receptive to the seed, but that wasn't his job. His job was to scatter the seed in all areas of the field and then allow the seed to do its job and produce a harvest where it was planted.
     We as teachers are tasked with much the same responsibility. We have been given the opportunity to sow seeds of confidence, passion, knowledge, and perseverance among a long list of other skills and attributes, and we are not supposed to be selective or exclusive in who we impart those skills to along the way. As we teach, we sow those seeds in much the same way as the farmers of old, we scatter the seeds of knowledge to all that we have the opportunity to share. We may get discouraged when we do not see an immediate impact or the instant light bulb going off in every field we are planting those seeds, but that isn't necessarily the immediate outcome we should be expecting. Our job is to plant the seed, nurture the seed, and cultivate that seed, then at that point the seed has to do its job. You can't do the job for your students, athletes, co-workers, friends, or family. They have to do that deed themselves. Let's not delineate the impact of those that sow the seed, but instead let's ramp up the importance of sowing those seeds into the lives of all those that we teach and then supporting and nurturing that seed so that each seed we sow has the opportunity to produce "a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” Matt. 13:23
Coach Carter