Plant Sequoias
“Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.”
- Wendell Berry, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front (excerpt)
One of the hardest things about work like ministry or international development has to be the feeling that sometimes no progress at all is being made, or that things even seem to be moving backwards.
We humans are incredibly impatient, and we love to see clear, tangible, consistent progress in the things we invest our time, money, and energy into. When we plant “seeds”, metaphorically speaking, we’re hoping for 100% germination and from there the highest yield possible in the shortest amount of time.
We’re optimistic, and often expect the amount of work we put in to be reflected in the results. This, frustratingly, is often not the case.
If we’re being honest, very few of us get excited about the prospect of only seeing a few “sprouts” of progress after countless hours (or years) of labor, or to imagine that we may never see our work reach the point we imagine. Yet that is exactly the perspective we see laid out in this poem: we ought to invest in the future, whether or not we see the results.
We ought to work hard at those things which God has tasked us with, even if we aren’t around to see the fruit. From accompaniment to evangelism to justice work, the call is to be faithful, and to invest in eternity. To “plant sequoias” even though it will often be the case that we will never see them reach maturity.
If you’ve ever found yourself along the California coast, perhaps you’ve wondered at the magnificence of the towering redwoods, sequoia sempervirens, that have ruled the shoreline for centuries (some for millenia).
These are the world’s tallest trees, with the highest reaching about 380ft tall - 75ft taller than the Statue of Liberty! According to Encyclopedia Britannica, reaching maturity takes 400-500 years!
Their seeds have a low chance of germinating, and fires and floods create the ideal conditions for them. Were a person to plant one today, not even their great great grandchildren would see them full grown, if the seed were to even sprout at all. For this reason, it is so important that we don’t give up - that we keep investing in eternity. That we keep planting seeds. Some of these seeds might sprout, and some seedlings might survive, and some of those seedlings may even become saplings and one day, by the grace of God, some of those saplings will become sequoias.
Our team in Huehue is incredibly resilient. As our work has changed and grown and developed over the years, we’ve seen many “seeds”, or more specifically, programs and ideas, come and go. Some made it to the sapling stage, others never sprouted at all.
But in our efforts to serve the vulnerable children and families of Huehuetenango, we have continued planting and hoping and praying for a brighter, safer future. By the grace of God, we already have two saplings thriving: our family preservation program and now our foster care program.
Will we ever see the towering sequoias of a strong, stable, family-centered community, or a thriving foster care network large enough to meet the needs of all the vulnerable children in Guatemala during our lifetime?
Maybe - it’s hard to say. But without saplings there will never be sequoias, and so we continue to plant new seeds and to care for the saplings we’ve seen take root, applying the new things we learn along the way.
The metaphor runs deeper - there are also seeds and saplings within our programs. For example, our Family Preservation program: we’ve also seen some seeds grow while others, seemingly, have not (yet).
Some families still struggle after years of financial, spiritual, and psychological support. Some have made tremendous strides towards independence. Wherever they might be in their growth, our team continues to pour into them and continues to plant seeds in their lives and water those that are sprouting.
These people, each made in the image and likeness of God, each fearfully and wonderfully made, are worth every tear shed and every hard conversation and every faithful prayer prayed for them.
For every person that experiences the love of Christ through our team and our work; for every person whose life is transformed by that love; for every child who is protected from the dangers and isolation of institutionalized life; for every parent who is given a second chance; for every family reunified; for every family separation prevented; for every person who has a chance at a better life for themselves, their children, and the generations to come - it is worth it.
In Psalm 66, we see the psalmist praising God for all that he has done for his people, despite their struggles and trials. In verse 12 we read: “You let people ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance” (emphasis ours).
This work of preserving families, partnering with the government to build foster care where it didn’t exist, connecting with local churches, and educating the community on the need for family-based care options has not been easy. It has been fraught with struggles and challenges and failures.
And yet, God has brought us through. And just as the psalmist praised God for bringing his people through fire and water to a place of abundance, we hope that the fire and water we’ve faced as a team will also bring us to a fertile place, where our sequoia saplings can thrive and where the seeds we plant have a greater chance of sprouting.
Until our work is finished, we must keep planting and watering seeds, and we must keep praying for sequoias - whether we live to see them reach maturity or not.