The Story of the Bag of Seeds
One day a boy brought a dixie cup filled with moist dirt home with him from school. His mother asked him “what do you have in the cup?” The boy replied “a beautiful flower for
“A white one”. She smiled and said, “that sounds like it will be a beautiful flower, let’s put it on the window seal so it can get some sunlight and grow.”
They put onto the seal and the boy looked at it for a moment before going on to play.
His father opened the door that led from the garage to the kitchen having just driven home from work. He got a glass of water from the sink and drank it quickly until empty. He set the glass on the window
At dinner, he asked his son “what’s in the cup?”
“A flower for mother”
“Oh that’s nice”
He thought about a reoccurring conversation he had with a friend at work today. This same conversation with his friend was becoming irritating now. He thought to himself “If I have to hear about Russ’s plans to start a business so he can finally quit his job and be happy I’m going to tell him to either do it or quit talking about it” “It’s like every day now.” “Why doesn’t he just do it already or do something.”
For years Russ had been talking about opening a bakery, but then would talk about all the things that he had to do before he could. There was the location, the equipment, the lease and a small loan he needed. The fact that he didn’t have enough saved yet. Whenever he would offer some encouragement or advice to Russ he would come back with an excuse or a reason why that wouldn’t work or not yet until some other roadblock was cleared.
Russ had brought some baked goods from time to time to work to share with everyone and they were always a hit. Expressions of support to open the bakery fed his confidence but never translated into action. One of Russ biggest hang-ups was his fear of finding out the cost of a lease on a few places he wanted to put the bakery.
The father had an idea that might help Russ. He went downstairs in his house to the cold storage room and open a bucket filled with wheat, pulled some out and put the wheat seeds into a snack size ziplock. He put the Ziploc and a little potting soil in a small dixie cup and took it to work the next day.
At lunch when he and Russ were talking he pulled out the dixie cup and bag of seeds and hand ed them to Russ. ” What are these?” Russ replied confused.
“Seeds.”
“Ya, I can see that, why are you giving them to me?”
“Because I’m tired of you handing them to me every day thinking I can plant them.”
“What are you talking about?” Russ said intrigued.
“Every week you talk about your bakery and how you just need to get something put into place and then you can open. Well, here you go.”
“Ok, thank you?” Said Russ “Now what?”
“Go plant them!” The father said.
“Will it grow into a bakery?” “If so then you’ve got some million dollar seeds here! HaHa” Said Russ
“Haha, no they are wheat seeds, but if you treat these seeds like you’ve you been treating our idea of a bakery then all they will ever be is a bag of seeds and all you’ll ever have is just an idea of having a bakery someday.”
“They won’t grow unless I plant them, and my bakery won’t grow unless I plant that seed for real.” Russ sheepishly concluded
“Yup! So what is the first seed you are going to plant to grow that bakery?”
“I probably need to go and find the building owner and get real about the terms of a lease, then at least I’ll know what the next step is”
“Now we’re talking!” “And oh by the way they are wheat seeds.” The father said with a wink.
We each have some seeds we carry with us and show others. All they want to do is to plant them so they can watch them grow.
Oh, and the boys seed turned out to be a beautiful white flower.
Nathan Kahlil Harris
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