How Lila Little-Seed Changed the World
A little story about a big Kingdom and how it grows.
Lila was a little flower seed who lived in the city. Everywhere she looked she saw unhappy, hurried people. “These people need beauty,” Lila thought. “These people need hope and light and laughter. These people need flowers,” she said to herself, “And I know all about flowers – I have one living inside me! So, Lila made it her personal life mission to bring flowers to the big city people. She wrote songs about flowers, she sketched pictures of flowers, she gathered other flower seeds together and formed committees but still the city-dwellers looked unhappy. They did not understand her flowery descriptions and even those who tried, never fully grasped the concept.
One little boy who lived on her street had seemed especially unhappy lately and Lila Little-Seed desperately wanted to cheer him up. “If only I could show him the flower inside me,” she thought.
Rolling down the concrete with a hint of despair, Lila happened upon an old seed packet. Having never learned to read (since she is a flower seed) she studied the picture on the back of the packet closely. “Oh….” She gasped. “So that is how it works.”
Considering the costs, she rallied her courage and rolled into a crack in the sidewalk. She fell down a few inches and was buried in the cool earth. It was quiet. It was small. It was messy and a bit lonely but for the sake of the unhappy little boy, she surrendered herself to this new plan.
And slowly, quietly she began to crack open. It was painful and a little scary and just at the moment when she thought all of her dreams were dying, the flower inside of her emerged, lifted high and waved victoriously through the crack in the sidewalk.
The little boy knelt down in wonder. A flower! Here in the middle of this city street! He had heard about flowers but he’d never held one in his hand or smelled its scent. The little boy breathed in deeply and smiled.
Lila Little-Seed was happy – her dream to bring hope and beauty and laughter was coming true. Lila was thrilled – and she didn’t even know the rest of the story! You see, the boy picked the flower and pinned it to his shirt and everywhere he went people stopped and looked and wondered at his treasure. The boy took the flower home and gave it to his mother who put it in a vase and its fragrance filled their home. And everyone who visited their home that week, mentioned the flower and said it was lovely.
The mother was so pleased with the effect the flower had on her family and friends that as the petals wilted, she saved some seeds to plant in the spring. And every year more and more people gathered seeds from these rare and lovely flowers and 20 years later these flowers bring hope and beauty and laughter to almost every street.
“Oh…so that is how it works,” said Lila Little-Seed all those years ago. I think she would be pleased to know that though her life seemed quiet and small, even now the flowers grow and grow.
Matthew 13:31-32
He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
Mark 4:26-29
26 And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. 27 He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. 28 The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
John 12:24
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
2 Cor. 4:5-7
For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
Romans 6:4
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
