A couple of weeks ago, we retired our garden for the year. In the middle of ripping it out, I took special noticing of our basil plant. There were sprigs that had gone to flower, and, at that time, had dried up. I pinched a sprig to remove it - not paying attention to the fact that my fingers were squeezing a dried flower - and felt something firm between my fingers. When I opened them, there were tiny black seeds stuck to them.
Intrigued, I snapped off the spring and began to study it.
An herb plant grows and grows until it reaches the point of, as I call it, “going to flower.” It is at that point that that particular branch, or sprig, is finished producing the herb. And it is at that point that the seeds are produced.
The production of seeds has always fascinated me. After a branch has produced all that it is intended to, a beautiful flower emerges. It’s like the capstone of the plant’s purpose. Then, upon dying, the flower produces seeds that will start the miraculous story all over again. The basil sprig brought that fascination to a different level because of its uniqueness and provided me with the answer to the question I was pondering here yesterday before I even knew I would need it.
I brought several of the dried sprigs to school with me the next day. As a part of our lesson for the day, I asked my students to make observations about them. I also asked them to show me in which direction they thought the sprig had been growing. Every one of them got it wrong.
After the flower blooms, it droops forward as it dies, as if it were bowing. In doing so, its seeds - which are incredibly tiny - can take advantage of gravity to fall into the soil so they can produce new life. My students were justifiably mistaken about the plant’s direction of growth because the degree to which these flowers bowed was so great that it looked like they were perched up toward the sun.
All of this process is what I am called to do when I surrender. I not only have die to myself, but do so with reverence; I bow before my Father. It is only then that the seeds He has cultivated in me are able to fall into the soil so they can produce the life that will grow in the next season.
In life as a whole and in the small things, this is what I am called to do. This is the way I receive my restructuring.