The Harvest You Didn’t Plant

When I was a kid, my family loved gardening. I have fond memories with my parents and two brothers of long hours out in the summer heat, tilling rows and planting seeds. From corn to squash to pumpkins and melons, we grew everything that we could buy seeds for. We especially loved summer squash. Toward the end of the summer, it seemed that every meal we ate would be accompanied by a huge pot of squash that my mom would cook with lots of salt and butter. It was a blissful, satisfying reward for our hard work to stuff our mouths with as much squash as we could. 

Admittedly, in my early childhood, my job was easy. I just planted the seeds, while my dad did the real, backbreaking work of tilling the ground. But, no matter how hard we worked to prepare the soil, plant the seeds at the right time, keep the critters away, water daily, and all of the other particulars necessary for a bountiful harvest, squash plants are annual, meaning they complete their entire lifecycle in one season before dying. In order to feast on squash the following summer, we would need to begin the whole process of planting seeds and cultivating a crop the next spring. There was a single season of yield from each seed planted. 

Our garden had good years and bad years. Sometimes we would have more harvest than our family and entire neighborhood could consume. Other summers, if we were too busy to properly tend throughout the season, our taste buds would suffer through store-bought squash. 

However, any given summer, if you strolled through the chainlink gate at the back of the garden, you would be met by a small but lovable orchard. While some of the trees struggled to overcome the dry high-desert climate they were planted in, there was one tree that defied the odds. On the far side of the orchard, we had an apricot tree that might as well have been on steroids compared to the rest of the orchard. It required little watering, pruning, or much tending to at all, yet every year this particular apricot tree produced more fruit than our family and friends could eat. We would collect and enjoy basketfuls all summer, and still the ground and birds would consume as much as we did. The most amazing part of this tree was that, unlike the squash or corn, it was a perennial. This tree would produce hundreds of apricots every summer for 40-50 years! 

In the same way that some plants last for a single season while others keep producing year after year, spiritual fruit often depends on faithful witnesses who plant seeds that outlast them.
Many of us have heard the name Nabeel Qureshi. Most famous for his NYT bestselling book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, Nabeel’s story and radical transformation from Islam to Christianity have been instrumental in reaching Muslims with the truth of the Gospel.
Perhaps less likely to be known is a man named David Wood. David is a Christian apologist who befriended Nabeel while they both studied at Old Dominion University. Through the course of their friendship and religious discussions, David planted seeds of Gospel truth that would go on to grow into Nabeel’s unwavering discipleship to Jesus. 

David Wood’s conversion story began during his darker past while he was incarcerated for violence. One of David’s fellow inmates by the name of Doug read his Bible and shared about his faith in Jesus while living authentically as a Christ-follower and inviting David to do the same. Though little is known about Doug, the seed planted in him bore fruit in David, whose life in turn bore fruit in Nabeel.
Nabeel Qureshi passed away from stomach cancer in 2017, but his testimony and teaching ministry has impacted thousands of Muslims who reference Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus as a key point in their conversion to Christianity. 

When Jesus explains the parable of the sower in Matthew 13, he follows that story with another short one that may easily go unnoticed. In the single verse Matthew 13:33, Jesus tells the parable of a little leaven. “He told them another parable. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.” Jesus compared the Kingdom to leaven that spreads unseen until it transforms everything. In the same way, Gospel seeds planted today can grow far beyond our individual reach and influence. There is no doubt that Scripture teaches that God regularly uses people as the conduit to bring others to knowledge of the saving grace of Jesus.
In Isaiah 49:6, God says “I will make you (Israel) as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” Jesus fulfilled this prophecy by commissioning His followers—the true Israel—to be His witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth in Acts 1:8. And that mission still includes us: to share what Jesus has done in our lives and for all humanity.

Doug, the inmate, may have shared his faith with dozens of fellow prisoners who rejected the Gospel, but the faithful seed he planted through his witness to David Wood went on to bear fruit in Nabeel Qureshi, which produced a thousandfold and continues to bear fruit for the Kingdom of God. 

Here’s the thing about planting Gospel seeds: we don’t know whether they will bear fruit for a single season or for generations. But we do know this—the Holy Spirit prepares the soil, grows the faith, and reaps the harvest to Himself. Our job is simply to plant faithfully.