Memorize: Romans 14:17-19 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men. Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.
Sally was so excited about her tiny seed. She got it from her uncle. He was excited about it too.
“Sally, this is a very good squash seed. If you take good care of it, and you plant it in good soil, and water it, and give it good sun light, it will grow into a big squash plant. You will pick huge bright yellow squash from your plant.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” said Sally. “I have always wanted a seed. Hello, Seed. You are my special, great seed. But I don’t want you to grow a squash plant, and make huge bright yellow squash. I want you to be a watermelon plant and grow huge juicy watermelons.”
So Sally planted her seed and took great care of it. A little plant came up and Sally said, “Hi little watermelon plant. Grow big and strong and make huge juicy watermelons all for me.”
The plant grew and grew. Sally was thrilled when the little buds opened up into yellow flowers. “Great job plant. Your flowers are so pretty. You will make great watermelons. I just know it.”
And then the flowers wilted and formed little yellow fruit. And the fruit grew and grew, and Sally knew that a watermelon was not bright yellow. A watermelon was not a funny club shape with little bumps all over it. Her seed, her plant, her flowers did not make huge juicy watermelons. It made squash.
Sally put on her big brown boots and picked the squash. She carried it to her driveway and laid it carefully on the cement. She took one step back from the squash, jumped as high as she could, and squashed that squash to bits with her squash squashing boots.
Sally’s squash squashing boots got a lot of work that summer, and her driveway got very messy. That one seed gave Sally 14 big squash, and Sally squashed every one of them. She just couldn’t believe that her seed grew squash when she wanted watermelon.
Skeeter had more choices than Sally. Sally’s uncle only gave her one seed. But Skeeter had a whole bag of seeds to pick from. Skeeter’s seeds weren’t plant seeds, but they were still seeds that he could grow into something bigger. They were still seeds that would give him something back. When Skeeter saw Sally squashing her 14th squash, he picked out a seed and planted it right then. He said, “Stupid Sally squashing squash!” Skeeter planted seeds like that a lot. He planted anger whenever he wanted to. He planted put downs and pushed for his own way. He planted selfishness, pride, and greed. And Skeeter’s seeds grew. He got back exactly what he planted just like Sally. She planted a squash seed. It does not matter one bit that she wanted watermelon. A squash seed can only grow squash. Skeeter planted anger. It does not matter one bit that he wanted peace. An anger seed can only grow anger.
The Bible has a lot of stories about plants and farming. Jesus and the Bible writers put those stories in there because the people they were teaching knew a lot about farming, so it was a good way for them to learn. You may not know so much about farming, but a seed still has an important message for you. A seed can only grow one kind of plant. If you plant squash, you get squash. If you want to get watermelon, you have to throw away the squash seed and get a new one, a watermelon seed.
Paul wrote the Book of Romans. It was a letter to a church to help them with some of their problems. By problems I really mean fights. I don’t think they were punching or kicking each other, but the bad words were flying. They were fighting with each other about food. Some people said, “Never eat lobster!” and some people said, “Lobster is great.”
Paul told them that peace matters more than lobster. I put his words at the top of the page for the memory verses, but I’ll put them right here, so you can read them again if you didn’t memorize them yet. Romans 14:17-19 For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men. Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.
Paul said make every effort to do what leads to peace. That is planting peace. Effort is something that you do, something that you work at. Every effort is more than any person has ever done. You have made effort before, maybe even a lot of effort or great effort. But you have always stopped before you got to every effort. What if you wanted to wash the dishes, but your mom said you had to watch TV. Every effort would keep asking, keep begging. Every effort would turn off the TV and dash into the kitchen. Every effort would pull the slimy spoons away from your mom, so that you could smear the soap and scrub them clean.
If you want peace in your life (and you do) you must make every effort to plant peace. Put it into every part of the day that you can. Shove peace into a fight instead of your way. Plant peace instead of anger. Plant peace instead of greed, selfishness. If you plant peace, you’ll get peace and it really does feel good.
Proverbs 17:1 Better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting, with strife.
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