Your Future Grows from What You Plant Today

“Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow—perhaps it all will.” Ecclesiastes 11:6 (CEV)

Everything in my life starts as a seed. There are many kinds of seeds—beautiful seeds like kindness, love, faith, and integrity. And then there are uglier seeds, like gossip and greed. But there are two things all seeds have in common. First, all seeds need time to grow. And second, I harvest whatever I have sown.

Think about literal, physical seeds. When I plant a seed in the ground, there is always a waiting time between planting and harvesting. I sow in one season, and I reap in another season. I don’t plant tomato seeds and pick a tomato an hour later. I have to wait.

It’s the same way in life. Maybe I’ve planted seeds of kindness in a relationship. I don’t necessarily reap kindness immediately. I have to plant the seeds, trust God to grow them, and then wait.

Ecclesiastes says, “For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. . . . A time to plant and a time to harvest . . . A time to scatter . . . and a time to gather” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2, 5 NLT).

Once the seeds have grown and I'm ready to harvest, I can trust that I will gather what I have sown.

If I plant seeds of gossip, the people in my life will likely gossip about me too. But if I plant seeds of kindness, people will be kind to me in return. If I plant seeds of faith, I will experience faithfulness.

So what do I do while I'm waiting on God—after I’ve planted seeds and are waiting on them to be ready to harvest? I keep sowing the kind of seeds I want to reap.

The Living Bible paraphrase says, “Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow—perhaps it all will” (Ecclesiastes 11:6).

Am I waiting a long time for the harvest in my life? If so, here is a verse for encouragement. In Habakkuk 2, God says, “At the time I have decided, my words will come true.  You can trust what I say about the future. It may take a long time, but keep on waiting— it will happen!” (Habakkuk 2:3 CEV).

The harvest may be slow in coming, but God says that, at the right time, it will. Keep waiting, trusting God, and sowing good seeds in my life. God will grow my seeds, and one day I will reap a harvest. 

In summary: 

Everything in life begins as a seed—whether good ones like kindness, faith, and integrity, or destructive ones like gossip and greed—and each seed takes time to grow before it can be harvested. Just as in farming, sowing and reaping happen in different seasons, so in life we must patiently wait for the results of what we’ve planted, trusting God to bring growth in His timing. What we sow, we will eventually reap: kindness produces kindness, gossip produces gossip, and faith produces faithfulness. While waiting for the harvest, the key is to keep sowing good seeds, knowing that God promises the harvest will come at the appointed time.

Bottom Line:

Keep planting good seeds through your actions and attitudes, trust God with the timing, and stay patient—because in the right season, you will reap a harvest.

So I need to start consistently “sowing” seeds of value into those that God brings around me.