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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW (05/02/19)
I, Franca and Yves had left the salon to drop Franca off since she didn’t drive. She sat in the back seat, Yves sat in the front seat while I drove. On our way, she couldn’t keep silent about how short my hair was and how long it took for my hair to grow a few inches. I could hear her laugh and clap her hands as she made fun of me.

All the while, Yves was silent and she wouldn’t even laugh. She turned and told Franca to keep quiet if she didn’t want what happened on June 3rd 2018 to repeat itself. Still laughing Franca tried to find out what happened on that day. Before Yves could speak up, my reaction totally surprised her. Yves looked like someone who had been served with food which she didn’t order. She looked surprised and confused all at the same time while Franca looked clueless.

Seeing their reaction, I proceeded to tell them about an incident that I had learnt about a few weeks ago when I went to visit my aunt. Aunt Aggie loved to plant flowers and knew about all the different varieties. I, on the other hand could barely remember the names of any of the varieties she planted. While I absolutely loved most of them, there was one particular one which I didn’t really like.

I could never remember its name, so I called it “plain” because it had a dull color and thorns on the branches and also the petals looked quite interesting. I went to see Aunt Aggie to get some flowers for my room. After chatting for a few minutes, she came in with a beautiful bouquet of flowers. I immediately fell in love with them and I had never seen them in her garden.

She told me that she had not planted new varieties and it was actually, the flower that I disliked, “plain”. I was shocked because it didn’t look like it in anyway. It couldn’t possible be the same seeds, but she disagreed. I couldn’t understand how that could be possible because there was no way she could get something different from what she planted. My reaction was just like Yves’, surprised and confused.

She proceeded to explain that though she planted the same seeds, the flowers were different because she grafted the branch of “plain” to another similar flower. I always harvest what I sow but not this time. She then added, its not always true what they say, you actually don’t always reap what you sow even in the literal sense. To finish my story I gave them a short version of the sermon that I received from Aunt Aggie after she told me about the miraculous plain flower.

It's true in life that you face the consequences of your actions, there is no way around it, but its not always the case. For Christians like us, this is not our truth because we didn’t face the consequences of our actions. Our life of sin and disobedience would have led to facing an eternity away from the presence of God, but we didn’t get what we deserved.

In Christ, we didn’t reap what we sowed which was a life of sin. Sin was the only seeds we had and thus all we could bear were bad fruits which were displeasing to God. The consequences of that were however changed when we gave our lives to Christ and even more when we were grafted to Christ, we begun to produce different fruits which were pleasant to God.

This is just what happened to “plain” she added. I am just like plain, I murmured. I walked away with more than a bouquet of flowers that day. In the car, the girls were very silent, so I gave them a few minutes to think. I then told Yves not to be surprised that I reacted differently from my June 3rd reaction which would have been to get angry and probably drop Franca off in the middle of the road.

This time I laughed and asked for tips on how to grow my hair. I am grafted now, I told them and thus I could only produce good pleasant fruits. Franca then asked me to graft a strand of her hair to my hair to grow it. We all laughed, and she got out of the car, not in the middle of the road but in front of her house.
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This article has been read 321 times
Member Comments
Member
Date
Corinne Smelker 
05/09/19
Your grasp of theology was amazing. It really made me think. If you worked on rewriting some parts of this, you would be onto a winner.
Barbara Culler 
05/10/19
I'm so glad we don't reap what we sow! Thanks to Jesus! I did find it a bit hard to follow the story, and the different characters, but the message was loud and clear!
Terry R A Eissfeldt 
05/10/19
A great devotional. You could have skipped the whole first part and started with you in the garden with your aunt. Blessings
Lollie Hofer 
05/14/19
Interesting take on the topic. Lots to think about. I'm thankful that, because of God's grace and mercy, we don't get what we deserve. Good job. I would like to encourage you to write "tighter." Once I'm done writing a devotion, I'll challenge myself to eliminate 30-50 words. It usually makes for a smoother read. Keep writing.
Elaine Hemingway
05/15/19
Good material here but it took a couple of readings to get it all sorted. Time restraints do prevent strong editing but it is necessary to cut out some of the side issues to tighten your text. Well done though, you have the knowledge. I look forward to reading more.