My wife and daughter found this little volunteer in a flowerbed this summer. In amongst the mulch, all by itself, was this little shoot. It wasn't like the Lamb's Ear or Daisies near it, so we knew it shouldn't be there. After we pulled it, we found it was indeed a future tree, growing from a nut. How cool!
After looking at it a bit I asked my daughter to snap a picture so that I could ponder its significance and how it can apply to our work at TLSP. See my random thoughts below:
We have no idea how it arrived at its spot in our front yard. The subdivision is relatively new, so there are not many large trees, nor any nearby Oaks that this acorn would have dropped from. One never knows when an idea will germinate from the staff at TLSP. We tend to go down rabbit holes often, but sometimes those discussions can lead to something great.
We have no idea how long ago this was planted (by an industrious squirrel?) Our teachers are planting seeds every day… over 300 educators at 19 schools are helping root nearly 4,000 students in the path that God has for them. Some student successes are evident, others take a bit of time (see this past blog post), and some may not pop up for decades until Mark Muehl sees them on a Lutheran school educator Zoom. But our teachers keep doing what they do with love and enthusiasm, seeing their mission as “getting kids into Heaven.”
Maybe it wasn’t a squirrel (we did catch an image of a chipmunk on our Ring Camera one night!), or maybe it was a butter-fingered bird that dropped this. We had pumpkin plants sprout for similarly unknown reasons. As we learn at the Lutheran SGO, not every family is a typical “2 parent-2.3 children” household nor matches previous generations of expected students, but everyone has a part to play, and everyone needs a quality, Christian education.
While beautiful, we still pulled it. Some ideas just are ahead of their time, or in the wrong place. I often change my prayer from “God, show me the way”, to “God, open my eyes. Show me what you have placed before us.”
Maybe I should add that life is precious, or that life is hardy. I hope you enjoyed your summer, look forward to the leaves changing, and continuously thank God for his daily production of life and its wonderment. “The earth has yielded its produce; God, our God, blesses us.-- Psalms 67:6
