Invisible

The principal of the neighborhood elementary school and I were visiting in her office. We were chatting about plans for the upcoming semester, coordinating schedules, and broader neighborhood issues.

While we were talking I mentioned that several students from the school had spent a week in the woods at the church's camp the previous summer.

She asked who had gone and I casually rattled off a list of a half-dozen boys. She stopped, gave me an odd look, stood up, walked over to her desk, picked up a file, and opened it.

She said, "Tell me again who went to the camp?"

She seemed to be checking off the names of the kids in her file as I said them.

She closed the file, looked at me, and said, "I knew something had happened to those boys this summer. There's been something different about them this year. I didn't know what and I've been trying to put my finger on it. Now I know."

I had been at camp that summer. In fact, I had been a cabin counselor to those boys. By the end of the week, the collective prayer of the entire staff was, "Thank God it's over!" It had not gone well.

Or so we thought.

Because sometimes fruit is invisible. Yes, we knew we were trying to plant seeds in the kids lives. But those boys were moving targets the entire week and we were pretty certain they had dodged all the seeds we tried to scatter.

But something took root in them. It might have been something we had sewn or it might have been a seed or two that were drifting on the Wind that we knew nothing about. Or most likely it was some combination thereof.

And the seeds took root. And they bore fruit.

Invisible fruit.

Fruit that none of us at church could see. Fruit that we didn't see out on the streets. Fruit they couldn't really see at the school, but they knew something was there; they just couldn't put a finger on it.

It's in these moments that I get a little hint about the depth of faith and trust we need if we're trying to be about the work of the Kingdom. We need to trust that when we try to sew seeds that once in a while some will take root. We need faith to know that sometimes the fruit is invisible. We need to live in the peace that can come from faith and trust, especially when the fruit is invisible.

And in the midst of the moments when someone notices something different that they just can't put their finger on, we can experience a glimpse and echo of what Isaiah was trying to say when he wrote, "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped." (Isaiah 35:5)

Lord, forgive me my desire to always see the fruit of the seeds I've tried to plant on Your behalf. Let me sew seeds in faith and trust today.