Evidence on Facebook

Today's sermon was about sowing seeds. It got me thinking not only about my present, but about my past. I have dedicated my life, personally and professionally, to working with people. And so I have attempted to spend my life scattering seeds of kindness in people's lives. I've gotten to know them, given them advice, encouraged them, and hoped to make a difference, but I'm not always privileged to know if what I've done mattered.

That is one of the reasons why I enjoy facebook. At this point I have about 550 friends and most of them I have known at some point in my "Real LIfe." They have been high school or college friends or acquaintances or students who I worked with as a hall director or Dean of Students. They were people's lives that i had hoped to positively impact.

It is so fun for me to see all of the great things these people are doing to change the world. They are raising great kids. Some of them have grandkids already. They are teachers, pastors, lawyers, missionaries, photographers, doctors, businessmen and women, students, etc. who are making a difference in their worlds. It Is a huge blessing for me to even pretend like I had a small part in forming them into the people they are today.

When I think back to 20 years ago I had many young adults in my office who were 18 or 19 and really struggling to make good decisions. I was frustrated by their choices, irritated that they didn't listen to good sound advice, and saddened by the way it appeared things would turn out for them. Some of them have had difficult roads as a result of those choices, but most of them have been able to survive those choices and become role models for the generation after them.

And that reminds me to continue to scatter my seed today. It may seem as though, especially with some of my children, my seed is falling on such hard ground that it will never be absorbed. But I have to keep reminding myself that my only job is to scatter the seed. The harvest is none of my business.

So thanks, facebook friends, for letting me be part of your lives at some point over the last 40 years. To see how you've "turned out" is an encouragement to me that maybe something I said in the past made sense to you. Or, maybe I had nothing to do with it, but i can at least pretend.

So for another day, I'm going to sow some seeds. Maybe I'll have evidence in 20 years that it mattered, and maybe I won't, but that's not the point. The point is in planting those seeds today.