The Parable of the Seed

Long ago, a sower of seeds received word that a group of propagators wanted to form a place of agricultural reverence.   Successful with great harvests, he lived the philosophy “Do not judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”  He thought about the invitation and decided he would join the promulgating society of the agricultural gathering.

When he arrived at the agricultural facility, the simplicity of it impressed him.  It was a small building.  Once there, he learned that other sowers had the same philosophy as he did.  They were sowing seeds on every available piece of property they could find.  He decided this was a good thing and started attending their bi-monthly meetings.  A successful collector of seeds, called a spermologist, would teach a class on seeds at these gatherings.

After the harvest time, some of the sowers decided that they would share testimonies about their harvest and collection of seeds.  The core group of sowers invited some potential sowers to these meetings.  They realized that it would be beneficial to start some classes about seeds.  They decided to target the potential sowers and those that were interested in carpology, which is the study of seeds.

As a surprise, a sower sung a song that he wrote about seeds.  He had some of his farm hands deliver his wife’s piano, which she played as the farmer sang.  It was so wonderful that the core group collected seed songs from other agricultural groups.  In no time, the agricultural groups from the county decided to form an association.  This association joined with others across the state and formed a state seed federation.  In a few more years, the states started a national Seed Broadcasting Convention.

This national Seed Broadcasting Convention developed a system that enabled any agricultural reverence gathering, regardless of size, to participate in seed propagation across the nation and around the world.  Because of their cooperation to give 10% of their income, all agricultural gatherings, regardless of size, participated. 

The simplistic agricultural facility grew and started having weekly gatherings with more songs, more instruments, and more classes.  They decided to call a full-time carpologist.  A few years later they decided they needed a carpologist secretary and someone to lead the group in seed inspired music.

In the process of time, sowers spent more and more time at fellowships and less time in the fields.  The agricultural reverence gathering offered studies on types of soil, kinds of farming techniques, and various farming equipment.  They started programs that would raise money for seed awareness in the community, across the state, and around the world.

When excitement for seed sowing dwindled, the carpologist would invite a visiting charismatic carpologist to come and encourage a harvest renewal.  It was so successful that they expanded to doing one harvest renewal during pre-planting and another after harvest.

This lasted for a few years, more and more potential farmers became less involved with sowing seeds, and more interested with maintaining the agricultural society and the benefits it provided.  Sowers were more comfortable becoming spermologists.  The agricultural society, losing its seed sowing focus, slowly drifted toward seed worship.

The agricultural facility evolved as younger sowers focused more praising the seeds than planting them.  Where the traditional songs talked of the power of the seeds and the harvest, the contemporary songs incorporated more musical instruments, more emotions, and less carpology sound verses.  With continual decline, the agricultural reverence gatherings decided to change the way they gathered and where they planted seeds to attract people.  They determined that old soil was not vogue and decided to focus on new and uncultivated soil.  Finding the new soil, the original agricultural reverence gatherings continued to decline.

The move did bring potential sowers.  Spermologists decided that they would develop new techniques and clinics on cultivating.  Potential sowers outnumber veteran sowers and sowing dwindled.  Fewer seeds resulted in smaller harvest.  These modern agricultural reverence gatherings have an array of activities concerning the work of sowers.  The administration and management of these gatherings is a pattern for successful gathering growth.  However, the lead spermologist, associates, and the staff of the larger gatherings are expected to sow.  The rest enjoy the festivities. 

Veteran seed sowers of older agricultural reverence gatherings concentrated on maintaining the status quo.  Because they did not change sowing practices, they plant less seeds and produce little or no harvests.  Both young and old sowers forgot the basis spirit of seeds.  Seeds are remarkable.  Seeds are living organisms held in a state of suspended animation of dormancy.  The longevity of seeds is remarkable.  A seed with constant darkness, cool temperatures, and dryness will last for thousands of years.  Every seed has the potential to grow when given the opportunity.

The bottom line: seeds must be sown to produce harvest.



Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.  For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away:  But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you (First Peter 1:23-25 KJV).



Note: Scientists have successfully planted a 2000-year-old Judean date palm seed.  The seed was found in the Judean desert and carbon tested for its age.  The date is called Methuselah.

An Alligator Crossing the Nanafalia Bridge

I was visiting one of the churches I served when director of missions in Bethel down at Hoboken Baptist Church and saw a small dog that did not have a back leg.  That’s something that you don’t see everyday.  I told some small boys watching the dog that the church ran out of chicken legs for Sunday Dinner and they borrowed one from the dog.

My brother-in-law had some cousins that had a small dog that lost both back legs.  Feeling sorry for him, his uncle made the dog an apparatus with roller skate wheels attached to the puppy’s body where his legs would be.  I often wondered what he did around fire hydrants, car tires, and trees.  That’s something you don’t see everyday, a dog roller skate backside.

Back around 1972, the Goodyear Blimp was making a trip from Florida to the Iron Bowl in Birmingham.  The blimp was following Interstate 65.  I was a die setter for Keystone Metal Moulding in Clanton and I was helping a couple of co-die setters stack dies behind the building.  We spotted the blimp meandering above I-65.

Now, there were men and women working at Keystone that were very common country folk.  I could tell they had never been very far from home and lived sheltered lives.  Several ladies came running outside and were in a panic because they were seeing a UFO.  They were screaming and some were wringing their hands.  A cigar shaped silver object slowly rocking in the Eastern sky.  They thought the Lord was coming.  In a blimp. Really?

I stood there amazed at the people.  I said, “Hey y’all it’s the Goodyear Blimp headed to the game at Legion field Saturday.”  Some asked how did know it’s not a spaceship.  I said it has Goodyear written on the side.  It was something you don’t see everyday.

I was headed to the office when I noticed that the pickup in front of me had a mattress and box springs on the trailer it was pulling.  I observed that the mattress had become untied.  Suddenly, the wind picked the mattress up, up, up and away.  In the words of the crows in the Disney movie Dumbo, “Well, I have seen a horsefly, and I seen a dragonfly, yeah, I seen a housefly,” but I ain’t never seen a mattress fly until that moment.  The mattress looked like a large blue and white albatross slowly flying to the roadside.  That’s something your don’t see everyday, a mattress fly.

Speaking of seeing things on the roadside, on our way back from Texas I saw a stretch limo broke down on the side of the road.  It had a couple of doors open and the hood up.  I traveled for years and I think that was a first.  Limos with open doors and hood up are not something you see everyday.

One day traveling on the Interstate I saw port-a-let tied on the back and in the trunk of a car.  I know there are motor homes and travel trailers with built in toilets, but that was the first car I saw with one.  That’s something you do not see everyday.  The poor soul must have had Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

I was told by a truck driver that he saw a large alligator crossing the Nanafalia Bridge between Marengo and Choctaw counties.  Someone in a log truck tried to run over its tail, but most people dodged it.  When someone asked me reckon what the alligator was doing on the bridge.  I said, “Undoubtedly, he did not want to swim from Choctaw County to Marengo County, so took the bridge thinking it safer than being hit by a barge.  An alligator crossing the Nanafalia Bridge is something you don’t see every day.

Headed back home from Central State Bank in Calera when I worked at the cement plant, I saw a group of motorcycles.  The bikers and their women were a motley crew.  Long hair, beards, tattoos, and sporting sleeveless shirts and jackets they rumbled down Main Street on US Highway 31.  I noticed one of the blondes in a black leather jacket on the back of a Harley Hog was a neighbor.  What caught my eye was one of the Harleys pulled a small trailer.  A trailer behind a bike is not unusual. But, the casket on the trailer is something you don’t see every day.  I asked Shelia, my neighbor, about the casket.  She said it was a biker brother that wanted to be carried to graveyard on his bike.  Now that is something you don’t see every day. 

When is the last time you saw something that you don’t see everyday?  I think God gives us these moments where we can stop for a jiffy and ponder life.  Some things we see or hear about can be life changing like the corona virus we are experiencing this Spring of 2020. 

When Jesus walked on earth, there were plenty of things not seen every day.  The blind saw, the deaf heard, and the lame walked.  Lazarus rose from the dead, Peter walked on the water, and a small boy gave his lunch and Jesus fed five thousand.  People did not see those things every day.

I thought about Moses’ call as I pondered on these things.  He saw something that you do not see every day.  He saw a burning bush that did not burn.



And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him (Moses) in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed (Exodus 3:2 KJV).



As you venture down life’s highway, meditate on the things that you do not see everyday and ask this question.  God, what are you trying to teach me?

Spring Perspective and the Resuurection

You can tell when spring is near when you hear birds chirping, smell the aroma of trees and vines budding, see the countless colored daffodils, and taste food from the grill.  Spring is my favorite time of the year.  Everything is coming to life.  It makes Easter special.  It reminds us that the dead of winter and it long dark hours are gone.

I am one if the few that enjoy winter.  The Chain Saw team and I enjoyed snow in Missouri.  Well, I enjoyed the cold and the snow.  It reminded me of living in Illinois as a kid.  No, I am not a Yankee.  As the group ALABAMA sings, “My home is Alabama, Southern Born, and Southern Bred.”  Daddy worked up north for three years.  We moved back home to Alabama in the spring of 1960 because Mamma did not like the Yankees, the cold, and the snow.

Spring reminds me of going home, the eternal one.  It is the promise of eternal life found in the resurrection of Jesus.  Daddy died on Friday after Easter April 29, 1984.  I remember the morning I left the hospital.  The birds were singing, the morning sun glistened, and you could smell the aroma of spring.  I thought about what a beautiful day for daddy to go home with Jesus.

Doctors diagnosed momma with stage four-melanoma cancer in the fall of 1986 and she died in the winter in January.  Her last days were difficult.  The demon cancer consumed her beautiful body.  The funeral director said her body was as a piece of wood that looked solid until you picked it up, and then realized that, it was rotten and it crumbled in your hands.

It snowed days before her death.  With her arm eaten into from cancer, she watched me build a snowman from her hospital window.  I knocked on her window and made a face.  Hours later, the Clanton Hospital transferred her to the University of Alabama Birmingham Hospital.  I rode with her in the emergency vehicle.  I remember it snowing as we unloaded in downtown Birmingham.

They placed her in the terminal ward.  If there was a picture of hell it was the night I spent with her.  Seven people, including a young boy, young mother, and elderly man died that night.  Patients throughout the whole ward cried out in agony and pain. 

I had never been around such torment before.  I heard the cries of a young boy as he cried for his mother to hold him and stop the pain.  The lady in the room with momma would speak in a little girl's voice.  She said, “Daddy, please hold me.”  She repeated it over and over.  Momma would say, “Oh God, help me.”  She repeated this over and over.  I lay there with a feeling of hopelessness.  My pain seemed insignificant compared to those who died that night. 

I have thought about that night many times.  I went home, my back in severe pain from the stress, and stared at the ceiling.  I could not sleep, eat, work, study, read, etc.  I was useless and wanting to die.  This is how I pictured hell.  I was glad that this was the only torment that momma would endure.  When she died, my sister, my brothers, and I thanked God that she entered heaven where the flowers bloom forever and she would receive a new beautiful body.

And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom (Luke 16:23).

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand (John 10:27-28)

Resurrection morning Jesus solidified His promise, I am the resurrection, and the life.  

A Person of Faith

I was watching a car show the other night.  These shows do what I would love to do, rebuilding old jalopies.  My love for building cars started when I was in the fifth grade.  I got a model car kit from a classmate for Christmas.  Over the years, I had a pretty good collection that I lost when our home burned.  In that collection I had a ’55 Chevy Nomad, a ’50 Ford, a ’57 Chevy, a ’40 Willis, two ’32 Fords, the Batmobile, ’53 Ford pickup, and a few others.  Some of these date back to my teens.  I built them until the government regulations forced glue makes to change the formula and ruining its sticking power.

My dream car is a ’32 Ford Vicky, yellow convertible or five-window, 350 Chevy engine, saddle colored leather interior, and Crager junkyard mag wheels.  Trouble is, they are out there, but beyond a retired Director of Missions means.

These car-rebuilding programs have the mission of saving old cars one at a time.  The closest I have come to rebuilding an old vehicle is when my youngest son Aaron and I rebuilt my ’77 GMC pickup, and I understood the statement, “They don’t build them like that any more” a little better.  It is an era of American history that is fleeting away.   A friend of mine said that it makes him sick to watch classic cars headed to the scrap metal place.

My ’77 GMC is actually a 2009-13 pickup.  It looks old, but it has experienced a transformation.  No, it is not a Johnny Cash Cadillac.  It is a completely restored truck.  It is a work of love and labor.  I will always cherish the time that Aaron and I, father and son, spend together transforming a ragged, rusty, multicolored hunk of junk into what most call a “sweet ride” or a “clean” classic.

Transformed classics make up the body of the church.  Men, women, boys, and girls that experience the transforming power of God are new creations.  The power that raised Jesus from the dead is the power that transforms all those who trust Jesus as Lord and Savior.  It is the same power that carries believers to virus pandemics.

As I thought about restored vehicles and changed lives, I cannot help but to think about Brother Arch Crumpton.  He was a classic when speaking of a man of God.  He was an old classic that you don’t see anymore, a one of a kind.  Brother Arch was a giant pillar in my home church.  Brother Arch, two other deacons, and the pastor were the only men in my home church when I was boy.

I heard stories how Brother Arch would walk four miles to church on Sunday morning to start a fire in the old pot-bellied stove, then walk back home, hitch the mule team to the wagon, and then bring the family to church.  It makes those coveting toilet paper during corona virus panic a little silly.  We have grown too soft in our living.

Brother Arch always sat on the second pew on the preachers left.  He wore a dark blue suit, white shirt, a tie, and a fedora every Sunday.  He could pray some of the sweetest prayers.  I never heard anyone say a bad word about Brother Arch.

One of the most interesting stores about him was when he was a young man in his twenties.  I remember as a kid thinking that Brother Arch was ancient, being well into his seventies when I was a teenager.  He was tall and frail, but always sported a smile.  In his twenties, which would have been in the 1920’s, he had an appendix attack.  By the time the doctor arrived, he had gangrene and the doctor said there was little or no hope.

The doctor did something that most would think repulsive.  He opened Brother Arch, took out his intestines, and washed them in warm soapy water.  Once they were clean, the doctor repacked them.  I remember that Brother Arch always had a flat stomach.

Somewhere along that time, Brother Arch accepted the Lord as his Savior and the Lord removed the gangrene of sin from Brother Arch.  He was transformed and became a model for the men in our church and our community.

One of my fondest memories of Brother Arch happened one Sunday afternoon at my Aunt Edna’s.  My cousins and I were playing football in the front yard.  Brother Arch and his wife, Mrs. Blonnie, shuffled their way toward the house.  They walked along our goal line, which was the sidewalk to the house halting the game for a few moments.  Suddenly, Brother Arch called for the football.  One of my cousins tossed it to him and Brother Arch kicked the football.  He laughed and told us to have fun.  We all had a little more respect for him seeing that old man could kick a football.  Brother Arch will never know how much of an impact he had on my early Christian walk.  He was an inspiration and an example of what a Christian should be.  He was a Christian Classic. He has always been a man of hope.   Our churches would much better with more men and women like Brother Arch.

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit (Second Corinthians 3:18 NIV).



Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new (Second Corinthians 5:17 KJV).