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The Beauty of the Seed – Does Size Really Matter?

The Beauty of the Seed – Does Size Really Matter?

Last updated on: November 24, 2020 at 7:04 am by Karl J. Forehand

The Beauty of the Seed – Does Size Really Matter? 2020-11-24T07:04:35-06:00 Karl J. Forehand

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A few days ago, I talked about sprouting and how it always amazes me to think about how much nutrition and goodness comes from those little sprouts. Much of the nutrition for a mature plant is found in the tiny seed from which if grows. But, not only does this little seed contain everything the plant need to grow, but it also contains the intelligence to cause the plant to become what it is going to to become.

There’s a deep lesson in that somehow.

The intelligence for the plant comes from a much smaller seed.

We often like to think about God, The Divine, Source as very big. We think of trees and other plants as being created from something larger. But actually the plants come from something small–a seed. And, originally the seed came from something smaller than a seed inside the plant.

I recently I was able to at least partially comprehend that there is itelligence in all living cells and particles. Even things that seem simple, like a brocolli plant or a brocolli seed, have the intelligence to crate another brocolli plant. I can’t do that. I can help create a human and I have learned a lot about how that happens, but I can’t think my way through it, it just happens because of something within me–something that is intelligent–something smaller.

To understand how the brocolli plant reprodcues, we have to look inside the brocolli plant and the seed to get clues, but we still don’t undertand how it all happens. We see intelligence there–we see creation there–we see God there. The deeper we go, the less we understand, and the more amazed we become.

This is why the mystics of many religions eventually talk about going inside.

To switch metaphors, when scientists look inside the brain, they notice all kinds of chemicals and electrical like reactions and synaps and thousands of others thing that happen involuntarily without us understanding how they work. The intelligence to make it all work is something we didn’t have to create consciously. It emergeged from other smaller things that already knew what to do to create a human brain.

I challenge you to think about these things today.

We often look for God outside and we think of something really big. What if God is something smaller that started it all and now lives in everything because that is the way things are. We know everything is energy and that energy never gets destroyed but just continues on (in the thing it creates?).

Contemplating how a brocolli plant is made or how a human comes to be is deep and interesting and will leave us with many questions. But, it will also cause us to be amazed and grateful and humbled by the majesty of it all.

For thousands of years, we tried to undestand The Divine by imagining something bigger out there. I want to challenge us all to go inside and possibly find something smaller that imagined a brocolli plant and a human and so on.

It’s just about Thanksgiving – maybe these types of thoughts will make us more grateful.

Be where you are, Be who you are, Be at peace,

Karl Forehand

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Karl Forehand is a former pastor, podcaster, and award-winning author. His books include Apparent Faith: What Fatherhood Taught Me About the Father’s Heart and The Tea Shop. He is the creator of The Desert Sanctuary and Too Many Podcasters podcasts. He is married to his wife Laura of 32 years and has one dog named Winston. His three children are grown and are beginning to multiply!

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Sprouts and Other Small Things

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