When I was a boy growing up on a small farm in Greene County, Mississippi, my father gave me a handful of corn seeds and told me to plant them beneath an old oak tree. I had asked him why we couldn’t grow crops in the cool shade rather than out in the hot sun. Dad just smiled, handed me the seeds, and let me discover the answer for myself.
As you might expect, the corn never grew under that tree. What I didn’t realize then was that my father was planting more than just corn—he was planting a lesson. Over the years, that experience became a powerful image for me: some truths, like seeds, take time to grow and bear fruit.
The First Seed: Four Basic Relationships
After high school, I enrolled at Free Will Baptist Bible College in Nashville, Tennessee (now Welch College). There, Dr. Leroy Forlines taught a course on Biblical Ethics that left a lasting impression on me. He said there are four basic relationships in every human life:
- Our relationship with God
- Our relationship with others
- Our relationship with ourselves
- Our relationship with the universe (the world and creation around us)
At the time, I understood these words only on an intellectual level. It wasn’t until years later—and after some failed relationships and painful lessons—that I began to grasp their true meaning.
The Second Seed: Love as the Heart of Faith
Thirty years later, while studying at Memphis Theological Seminary, another professor, Dr. Barry Bryant, built upon the foundation Dr. Forlines had laid. Dr. Bryant challenged us to see the Bible through one central theme: “Love God and love your neighbor.”
He helped me to realize that life is not primarily about rigid rules and laws but about how we live in relationship with others. Loving God fully means loving with every part of who we are—our physical, spiritual, rational, and emotional selves.
Jesus simplified it even further:
“Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:31)
Dr. Bryant pointed out something that profoundly shifted my understanding: before we can truly love our neighbor, we must also learn to love and value ourselves. Only then can we extend genuine, grace-filled love to others.
The Growth of the Seed
Looking back, I see how these “seeds” of wisdom were planted at different stages of my life. At first, they lay dormant beneath the surface, like that corn beneath the oak tree. It took time, experience, and even hardship for them to take root and grow.
The lesson is simple yet transformative: our faith is lived out through relationships.
- Our relationship with God is the source of our strength and guidance.
- Our relationship with ourselves shapes how we see and treat others.
- Our relationship with others is where our love is tested and expressed.
- Our relationship with creation reminds us of our responsibility to care for the world around us.
Living Out the Lesson
Today, I strive to live with this understanding: loving God means loving people. It means listening with compassion, forgiving freely, and walking humbly. It means seeing others—not as problems to fix or enemies to defeat—but as fellow travelers on life’s journey.
Just as that corn needed sunlight to grow, our relationships need the light of God’s love. Without it, they wither. With it, they flourish and bear fruit.
So, I ask myself daily: Am I planting seeds of love today? Am I nurturing them so they can grow into something life-giving?
The Curious Pilgrims 