Are we seeds?

Are we seeds?

Many times throughout the Bible God used agricultural terms to explain things to His people, as He spoke through His prophets, through the Lord Jesus, and also through the apostles. As we know, societies were primarily agricultural back then. The Lord always used sowing, reaping, seedtime, harvest, chaff, winnowing, threshing and many other agricultural terms like spring rain, latter rain, to explain His kind of care, His future judgments, His blessings, and other things. But what about the seed?

I found these verses on people being seeds planted by the Lord.

We are a Planting of the Lord

Isaiah 61:3
...They (-meaning those in Zion) will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor.

We are seeds whom the Lord has planted. As Corrinne May said in her introductory spiel to "Beautiful Seed" at her concert:
"...the seed is such a beautiful metaphor for ourselves and our lives. We start off being really really tiny and really small, very insignificant actually that you even need an ultrasound to see that little dot in the mother's womb. But then all the potential for who we are and who we will be is already there and that's so amazing to me.. that everything that we are, we just came from that small insignificant seed."

God has a dream for each of us even before we were born.God said, "before I formed you in the womb, I knew you"(Jeremiah 1:5). Psalm 139:16 says, "all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." He placed us in the world as a tiny seed in our mother's womb, to grow and grow into His dream for us.

We Must Die to Ourselves : Let God Plant You in the Ground

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.
John 12:24-26

As we follow Christ, we take up our cross and follow Him in His death, but in following Him,we have life. And because He rose from the dead, we have hope after death and power over sin. True freedom is found in following Jesus. The abundant life is the life that is surrendered and obedient to God. Not the life wherein one follows his own dreams and ambitions. It has been said, "there is no destination that is impossible to reach when one walks with God". Let God guide you and hold your hand. The most miserable and empty life is a life lived apart from and in rebellion against God.

Place yourself in the Maker's hands as a seed. Let God put His plans and purposes in your life. Let go of yours. Let Him plant you. You are a beautiful seed.

"Tomb Duties"- an Easter cartoon

This is one of my favorite reverendfun.com cartoons! :D

Finally, a pineapple fruit!

Around 20 months ago we planted pineapple tops (from grocery-store pineapples) in the garden of my parents' home.

I finally found a fruit on one of the plants! Woohoo!

Here's how the fruit looks like:


We have planted around 15 or so pineapple tops. Here are three of the pineapple plants (the plant with the fruit as seen above is the one on the right):

Beautiful Seed- Live performance with band and strings.-Corrinne May's concert in SG

Corrinne May: "I decided to name my new album and also this next song "Beautiful Seed" becuase i think the seed is such a beautiful metaphor for ourselves and our lives. We start off being really really tiny and really small, very insignificant actually that you even need an ultrasound to see that little dot in the mother's womb. But then all the potential for who we are and who we will be is already there and that's so amazing to me.. that everything that we are , we just came from that small insignificant seed. And I was inspired because oftentimes we think that you know, we're just one person, what can we do,but I look at the Mahatma Gandhis of the world,and the Mother Teresas , and you know, it's just amazing how one person can make a difference. I think it's good to remember that. So this song is called "Beautiful Seed"."

This video is "Corrinne May's performance of 'Beautiful Seed' at the sold-out 'Beautiful Seed' concert held at the UCC Hall in Singapore on the 3rd of August 2007. Corrinne is accompanied by a string ensemble and her 5-piece band." - from youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oyYUA-32Fc

Beautiful Seed by Corrinne May

View the video of this very beautiful song by Corrinne May

"Corrinne sings 'Beautiful Seed' at the COMPASS Music Awards on 20th May 2007 in Singapore where she was awarded the 'Wings of Excellence' award and 'Young Composer of the Year' award. "

BEAUTIFUL SEED

(written by Corrinne May Ying Foo, copyright 2006)

You can fill the darkness
with just one flash of light
Break the silence with just one word
One defiance starts a revolution
One life can save the world

On the steps of Washington
Sprinkled like confetti
Thousands of people sing
"We shall overcome"
The preacher shouts :
"Let freedom ring."
He gave his life for what he believed

You can be a witness
You can be a prophet
You can make the whole world believe
Break the strongest fortress
Change the way the world thinks
You can build a bridge where
foes can meet
Hope for the future
Shout it, don't whisper
Dreams are what we make them to be
There is hope in every heartbeat
Tiny as it seems
You're a beautiful seed

She's a pastor's daughter
She's only 16
But her heart and her belly
are breaking at the seams
Her boyfriend blames her,
he wants to pay
for the doctor to wash it away

As she lays in the hospital,
A Christmas choir is singing
About a child in a manger,
fragile and small
"Unto us is born a Savior"
She looks at her baby and cries
as she sings him a lullaby.

You can be a witness
You can be a prophet
You can make the whole world believe
Break the strongest fortress
Change the way the world thinks
You can build a bridge where
foes can meet
Hope for the future
in the tiniest whisper
Dreams are what we make them to be
There is hope in every heartbeat
Tiny as it seems
You're a beautiful seed

Every hope, every power
lies in the heart of a seed that flowers
Intertwined all across the land
We're all seeds in the Maker's hands.

--

Buying the filipinoyouth4life.com domain name & how our pro-life ministry started out

Through Yahoo domain names (in Yahoo Small Business), I was able to purchase the filipinoyouth4life.com domain name for our Blogger homepage, filipinoyouth4life.blogspot.com. The domain name is easier to remember of course and will help our future readers recall our website URL more easily.

Filipino Youth 4 Life is organized by Christian Pro-life Resources for the Philippines.Filipino Youth 4 Life started as a blog to inform the youth about the sanctity of life and to let them be aware of the humanity of the unborn and how wrong abortion is. Now the Lord has placed in my heart to make a mailing list, to keep the youth informed about pro-life teachings, quotes, events. In the future, as the Lord will increase our network and extend our influence, we will hold a pro-life youth congress for Christians.

Christian Pro-life Resources also started as a blog(around Oct 2006). Then the Lord gave us the idea to reproduce fliers about the diary of an unborn baby in January 2007. We have produced 14,000 pieces to this date and have distributed them all over the country. To our knowledge, 4 babies have been saved by the fliers. We know of four instances (it was just shared to us) wherein a mom in a crisis pregnancy read our flier and after reading,decided to keep her baby. Those babies are all worth it!

In September 2007 we held a two-day pro-life multimedia exhibit and mini-concert at Emilio AGuinaldo College. We featured 8 pieces of pro-life artwork by E.R. Arroyo, my friend, and displayed pro-life picture collages on large tarpaulins.We had a tabletop display of rubber fetal models also.

In October 2007, at the Jesus Revolution Now Convergence in Baguio City, our pastor, Pastor Jerome Ocampo, allowed us to share to the delegates about our ministry. The Lord put in our hearts that we should start a Christian pregnancy resource center soon to help single moms and girls in crisis pregnancies by providing vitamins, diapers and baby clothes. We put up two cellphone numbers for counselling women in crisis pregnancies.

This February 2008 we had another run of the pro-life exhibit, this time for 5 days, at the PUP College of Engineering.

On Feb. 28, the Lord opened an opportunity for me to speak on the Sanctity of Life at the Philippine Christian University auditorium. My topic was "The Precious Gift of Life- The Sanctity of Life from the Medical and Biblical Viewpoint". The Lord gave me the words and the message to say...it was His lecture. I had a different outline, but as I was making the slides the Lord spoke to my heart what to say.

We delight to serve God's heart and we are excited with what the Lord is doing! As the Lord leads us to more open doors and gives us more of His manifold wisdom in order to rescue the unborn generation,we just surrender all to the Lord and we gladly obey His leading. 1 Samuel 14:6 says "Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few." The Lord's plan and purpose is to save the unborn, and we will willingly participate with God in His plan!