Planting and Watering

You’ve consistently shown up to serve a meal. Guests are opening up in conversation, and you are sharing God’s love through your words and actions. You are planting. 

Another volunteer remembers names and drink orders, bringing a guest their preferred beverage with a smile before the guest can say hello! They are watering. 

We like to see end results. Social media draws us in with time-lapses of a room makeover because we want to see the satisfying before-and-after footage. We might even keep reading a book we don’t really like because we just HAVE to know how it ends. We also like to see the results of the love and encouragement we faithfully give to others. We plant seeds and water them week after week, so of course we want to see the growth! Sometimes we get the privilege of seeing just that. And other times, the story might just stop — a guest who never came back for a meal, an update not given, a conversation never fully finished. But not seeing the growth doesn’t mean that God isn’t at work. 1 Corinthians 3:6 says, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.” One volunteer may begin a relationship, another may continue it, and a third may eventually have a deeper conversation. In that way, sometimes we are planting seeds someone else will water, and sometimes we are watering what someone else planted. We aren’t responsible for producing the results. We are only responsible for faithfully doing what God has placed in front of us. 

So keep showing up. Keep building relationships. The moments that seem routine may still be part of a bigger work we cannot yet see. We may never know which conversation mattered most, or whose words God used at just the right time. And that’s okay. We were never meant to do every part ourselves.

We may plant. We may water. We may never see what comes next. But the growth was never ours to produce in the first place.