Since I love avocados, I've recently attempted to grow the huge, rock-solid seeds that are embedded in every fruit. From what I gleaned from briefly Google-ing the subject, the correct way is to stick toothpicks in the sides and suspend in water until roots start to sprout. For two months, I've been trying to coax even a small root out of the seeds, but all for naught. Three seeds immersed, and the only yield was three moldy, wet lumps with cracks spreading up the sides.
After the third failure, I threw aside the recommendations of the experts and went back to tried and true: plant the seed in soil. I figured I couldn't do any worse than I had already. At least the seeds were free byproducts of something I was already purchasing. Half-buried in some potting soil, looking forgotten next to my sink, this fourth seed sat there for several weeks. Now and then, some hope would seize me and I'd dash some water onto the seed. But mostly, I just ignored it.
A few days ago, I laughingly explained my seed saga to a visiting friend. To prove my black thumb, I pulled the supposedly rotting seed out from the dirt - and found tiny white shoots valiantly pushing out of the crack at the bottom! Eagerly, I replanted it carefully in the soil again, speaking kind words to this cooperative seed in hopes of encouraging it to grow. I'd read years ago that plants can respond to human touch, voice and affection, and I wasn't about to brush aside something that sounded so silly if there was a chance it would help.
Before I left for work yesterday, I glanced at my seed, still looking lifeless in the little pot next to the sink. But now I knew what appeared lifeless was really life-in-waiting, waiting for it's ordained moment in the sun. But still somehow, I was not prepared for what I found when I arrived back home that evening. This dead seed had grown a 2-inch shoot, with tiny, folded and wrapped green leaves. I stared in shock for a moment, then in a childish excitement, laughed and cupped the tiny green shoot with my hands. In my mind, I had seen a miracle.
Yet this miracle happens every day, everywhere we look - in the sidewalk cracks, on the side of rock cliffs, or on too-old food left out. We gripe about mowing the grass, or weeding the flowers, never considering how unbelievable it is that these hard, dead seeds bring forth the life of a whole generation, despite all the odds against them.
Our world is so often disconnected and uninterested in the natural world around us. We know more and more about how this world works, but it means less and less to us on an individual level. You can look up the precise hour and minute for the sunrise and sunset, and the phase of the moon, or the moment of the high tide, but do we know what these mean? Do they mean anything anymore to people who update their life constantly on Facebook, cannot be found without their cell phone, or constantly have the television as background sound?
I've excitedly proclaimed the Miracle of the Avocado to several friends and coworkers, to which I get a small smile and a "isn't that neat? I can't grow anything, I kill it all." Plants don't operate at ethernet speed, and the moon doesn't update it's phase on Facebook for us. Maybe if it did, we'd pay a little more attention. Perhaps not. When did we become so numbed to the world around us? What should have been a Miracle, or at the least a small Joy, was reduced to just an interesting fact to note and set aside.
I look at my avocado shoot, and I see God there. Perhaps I'm too naive, but how else can something alive come from a dead seed? Yes, I know the science of how it happens, but does that really explain the mystery of how, and especially why, this life pushes out of the dry brown shell it was wrapped in. I'd like to think God too delights in seeing this little fragile shoot come from seemingly nowhere. He smiles over it, and over me, delighting in it.
For perhaps, this is why He created life - and particularly avocados: not only does He too love guacamole, but He loves to see the Miracle of the Avocado time and time again, just as I do. For with Him, life's triumph over death is The Theme that all the world struggles and slouches towards. The tiny life of the newly born plant triumphing over the brown, crusted stone of a seed. All of the world sitting next to my sink in a little plastic pot.
