Living on Mission: Episode Three

Episode Three: Making the Community Connection

The seed you grasped in your hand was meant to grow, not to remain in your hands. If you were meant to be commanded and controlled, and to have yourself moved about like a puppet on the strings, you might be expected to hold it fast. But you were called and liberated to live freely, and in your living, to produce more life.

The life flowing to you, from the source, does not end with you. It flows through you, ending in a fruitful connection to the rest of the community in which we have been planted. When you connect to God, holding that seed in your hand, you are promised more than just a better life for you, you’re promised the kind of life that creates opportunities for others to connect to God.

When we think about the beauty of a tree or a flower, we don’t think of it in the seed, or the branches, but in its fruit. When the flower blossoms, or the tree puts forth its fruit, it is then that we look on its loveliness in wonder and awe. The seed you hold in your hand has the potential to be beautiful – all of the splendor that can be is within that seed. The connections you make to others in the garden of God will support you, sustain you and inspire you to keep growing. But without fruit, those other connections will ultimately be in vain.

You will find that this is what you were meant to live for. A fruitful and productive connection to your community will inspire you to continue connecting to God, seeking over and over the source of your life. You will never have been more beautiful, your life never more attractive than when you’ve allowed your seed of promise to come to fulfillment.

Go ahead and eat the fruit – here’s to the promise of a better, more fruitful life!