To preserve any kind of future,
You plant what you want to harvest.
To find out how, watch our Truth in Two (full text below). Don’t miss the “Afterword”!
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Pictures: Josh Collingwood, Snappy Goat
FULL TEXT
Recently I was asked, “What do you think the future of America will be?”
Since I was talking with a farmer, my response was “seeds.”
I continued, “The biblical concept ‘you will reap what you sow’ always comes to mind. What is true for individuals is also true for institutions, organizations, and countries. What America sows, she will also reap.” What anyone desires for their future depends on the kind of planting they are doing in the present.
Any kind of future harvest one desires, depends on the seeds one is sowing now. And everyone is sowing seeds. Personally, my investment in the future comes in the form of influential ideas. My gift is as a preservatist; I am trying to conserve the great ideas and ideals passed down to me, passing those ideas on to others. It is my hope as a writer and teacher that influential ideas such as liberty, justice, courage, wisdom, and charity will influence individuals and institutions.
But the thing about sowing seed is you have to wait for the harvest. I can be pleasantly surprised by immediate results; except my view, is the long view. I believe in what Proverbs 11.18 calls “sowing seeds of righteousness” which will produce good fruit into the future.
There are times when people ask me, “Why don’t you speak on a certain social topic or examine specific cultural issues?” My response is always the same. I plant seeds of true Truth so that whatever audience hears my words, those seeds of thought will bear fruit in the lives of those who listen. When I am in my church, I teach or preach directly from Scripture. When I am in public, my declarations often come in the form of application, of biblical wisdom – direct and indirect – in my time and place; so that when I am gone, new growth will arise from those seeds.
For Truth in Two this is Dr. Mark Eckel, president of the Comenius Institute, personally seeking truth and planting seeds of truth, wherever it’s possible.
AFTERWORD It is important to say that no one can “know the future” with any surety (Ecclesiastes 11:1-6 “you never know,” 3x). Beyond that obvious statement, the Proverbial ideal is expressed in a way that one can know the future of any endeavor by knowingly planting what a person wants to harvest. If I want a crop of beans, I don’t plant radish seeds. In the same way, if I desire broadminded, thoughtful students, I plant a large garden with many points of view. The future of America, of any country, depends on what seeds are sown in the lives of an educated populace. If one is always taught their country is “bad,” young people will likely care little to defend it. If one is always told a religious group is “false,” students may assume the viewpoint has nothing to offer. If a person is always informed that one way of thinking is “wrong,” the individual will tend to belittle the perspective. The future of countries, universities, institutions, companies, or neighborhoods is based on who teaches what is taught, and how any subject is taught, in the present.