Unfinished Rainbows, and Other Essays

by George Wood Anderson

XXIII.
Thought Planting

There is nothing more common, and seemingly insignificant, than the planting of a garden. There are the simple upturning of the sod, the mellowing of the soil, and the burial of a hard-shelled seed. Let a chemist analyze the soil, and a scientist examine the seed, and they will be unable to find anything signifying relationship between the two. There is nothing, so far as the human eye can see, to suggest that the combination of seed and soil would be other than the combination of stone and stubble. But when once planted all the universe knows about the little brown seed. The earth and the seed were made for each other, and no sooner do they come in proper contact than the whole universe is set in motion about and for the development of that buried germ. There is not a cloud floating afar nor a star gleaming mildly in the distant blue that does not exist for that tiny seed until, through the ministration of sunbeam and moonlight, shower and baptismal dew, the seed arises, clothed in the glory of a resurrection, to lift itself in right royal grandeur above the clod.

No one can explain how the inanimate can thus become living tissue, but the sun keeps warming its leaves with caresses, and the kindly winds bring tribute from distant lands; and the guarding stars keep sending their benign forces, and the cool hand of the darkness offers its chalice of dew, so that the seed becomes a tree, whose nectar attracts the bees and butterflies, and whose wide-extending branches become the home and playground of the birds.

There is nothing seemingly more insignificant than the planting of a garden unless it be the beginning of a good and useful life. It is simply planting a thought in an ordinary human brain. The wise philosopher may examine the thought and pronounce it quite commonplace; the grammarian may test it and say that it could be constructed in a more exact and polished manner; the physiologist may examine the brain and pronounce the texture of its convolutions as being most ordinary. There is nothing anywhere to indicate that the combination of that particular thought and that particular brain could result in anything particularly extraordinary. The possessor of the brain may feel no different after the planting of the thought and have no presentiment of what it shall mean to him in the years that follow. But the whole universe knows about the thought planting. As the stars remember the buried seed, so all the divine forces of earth and heaven are set to work about the planted thought. Days and weeks may pass without the world observing any appreciable results, and it may even forget the planting. But God has not forgotten. He is remembering it, guarding it with divine care, and the results will appear sooner than we think.

That is the reason, I believe, that Christ took the mustard seed for the foundation of a parable. The seed is not only one of the smallest, being so little that it can slip unnoticed from your grasp, and hide within the crevice of a clod, mocking your solicitous search, but it is of most rapid growth. Within a fortnight it will overshadow the garden, and before the season is ended will tower twelve to fifteen feet in height, its sturdy branches affording shelter, and protected nests, for many birds. Divine thoughts within the brain are capable of this marvelous development. The planting may be an unattractive thing to do; the mind itself may be as unresponsive as the soil at the first planting of the seed, but God has not forgotten his truth, and all the universe is working for its fullest development. Soon, very soon, will it manifest its marvelous nature by rapid growth and bloom.

Here is a little lass, living among the forests of Domremy. Day by day she watches the soldiers of hostile powers tramping along the dusty highways to devastate the land she loves so dearly. Her heart aches as she sees her people languishing helplessly under the heavy yoke of oppression. Standing with tear-filled eyes one day she hears an old man say: “God will one day raise a deliverer for the French.” Amid the dust arising from the tramping of an invading army a thought was planted in the mind of a child.

Here is a little girl at Ledbury, near the Malvern Hills, sitting in her father’s dooryard, looking at the mysterious letters of a Greek book, whose secrets refuse to yield themselves to her inquisitive brain. Disappointed, she buries her face in her book and weeps, only to be found by a kind friend who picks her up and whispers in her ear: “There, do not cry. A little girl can learn Greek if she tries.” The world goes along as usual, not knowing that a new thought has been planted, and that girls may learn Greek as readily as do the boys.

Here is a little boy, standing by a harpsichord, watching his father’s fingers find the notes upon the ivory keyboard. His soul is filled with delight as he listens to the melodies that arise. Beholding the nervous twitch of the tiny fingers longing to earnestly and reverently touch the music-making keys, the father bends low, and says: “Be patient, son, and keep loving your music, for some day you will be a great musician.”