Some blessings arrive quickly. Most arrive slowly — the patient work of seeds sown years ago, finally ripening into something we can hold. This sonnet honors that slower harvest, and the God who never wastes a single planted thing.
The Sonnet
The seeds I scattered in another year, With trembling hands and no great certainty, Lie ripening in fields that now appear Heavy with what I could not yet foresee. I had forgotten half of what I sowed — The tears, the prayers, the kindnesses unseen, The little patient labors that I owed To days more weary than I would have been. But nothing falls to ground that grace forgets, And every quiet planting finds its hour, Where what was lost in shadowed darknesses Returns to me transformed by hidden power. So I give thanks — not only for the grain, But for the seasons hidden in the rain.
Reflection
Most of the truly important things we do, we do without knowing what they will become. The encouragement spoken in passing. The forgiveness offered when it was hard. The prayer prayed in the dark for someone we may never see again. These look, in the moment, like nothing. They feel like seeds dropped into uncertain ground.
And then, years later — sometimes much later — there is a harvest. A friendship sustained by something we said and forgot. A faith rekindled by a kindness we no longer remember offering. God is patient with seeds. Nothing planted in love is ever wasted, even when the planting feels useless at the time.
Whatever you are sowing now, in faith and with little visible return — keep sowing. The harvest is not your work. It is His. And He has never lost a single seed.
