May 10 Just an Apple Seed

May 10

It’s Just an Apple Seed

Zec 4:10 For who hath despised the day of small things?...

Her crushed body lay lifeless on the rural French road near the farmhouse where she had spent her entire life. Killed in the prime of life by a U.S. Army convoy that had driven by the farmhouse and hit her when she had tried to cross the road. The farmer had seen her killed and was determined to seek justice for her tragic death.   

The court proceedings that followed revealed she had been a very productive chicken. The farmer was not suing for the loss of the chicken, but for the loss of all the chicken meat he would have gotten from all the eggs she would have laid in the remainder of her life. He was asking for several thousand dollars based on the future tons of chicken meat he would have gotten from that one chicken, and her offspring. He settled for $50.

          I recently read another version of this same idea. You can count the apples on a tree but you cannot count the apples in an apple seed.

         In a world filled with mega-churches, superstars, billionaires and giant corporations, we are tempted to think our meager efforts are so insignificant that we should not even bother. Mega-churches win hundreds to Christ. Big name evangelists harvest souls beyond anything we can do. Why even bother. They win more to Christ in one meeting than we have in our entire life.  

     Some sports stars make more in a week than some of us make in our lifetime. The news is filled with spectacular things people have done, movies show lifestyles of the rich and famous, and we drive by homes that look bigger, more expensive and so far above our homes we wonder where we missed the boat. How can everyone have so much, and we have so little.

     Stop!  Tell the Devil to leave you alone and stop whispering those lies into your mind. That kind of thinking is not from the Holy Spirit.

1Jo 2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh,

and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,

is not of the Father, but is of the world.

      No, this is not a pep talk to tell you keep your chin up, think positive, and put a smile on your face and a skip in your walk. It is rather a meditation on how God works wonders with simple things, and uses the insignificant to show His mighty working.  

      Few people remember a Sunday school teacher named Edward Kimball. And why should they? He taught some rowdy boys who paid little attention to what he taught. But he continued to pray for and work with seemingly little results. He even tried to reach those rowdy boys outside of church. One Saturday he went to a shoe store where one of his boys worked. He found him in the back of the storeroom and the result was he led the boy to Christ. The boy was D. L. Moody.

We wonder at how many souls were won because D L Moody had a Sunday school teacher who did the work God had called him to do, even when it seemed so fruitless.

     You also never heard of Frederic Brotherton Meyer, a pastor in a small chapel in England where Moody preached during a visit there.

Meyer became an evangelist and years later on a trip to the United States preached in Northfield, Massachusetts. His preaching resulted in the salvation of J. Wilbur Chapman, who went on to be a dynamic evangelist. A young man who helped Chapman would eventually take over Chapman’s ministry.  

     The young man was Billy Sunday, who won thousands to Christ in Crusades all over America. One group of Christian men who heard Billy Sunday in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1924, were inspired to win their city for Christ. They did not give up and 8 years later were still working on it when they invited an evangelist, Mordechai Ham to speak.

     A teenage boy attended several of the meetings and was so taken by the message of salvation he returned for several nights and finally went forward and was saved. The teenage boy was Billy Graham.

     The meditation for today is to think about Edward Kimball, and his faithfulness, and then wrap our minds around the concept that God does not need your wonderful talents. He just wants your willingness and obedience. He can work out the details.

       If you see your life as insignificant and your efforts for Christ as unfruitful just think how many apples can come from an apple seed.  How much can be done by one person’s willingness and obedience. Only God knows. Let us join with Zachariah and Praise the God of “…the day of small things”!

1Co 1:27 But God hath chosen the foolish things

of the world to confound the wise; and

God hath chosen the weak things of the world

to confound the things which are mighty;