Seeds are one of the most miraculous things I know of, and they have been quietly working their wonders every day for untold years. Seeds usually come in a miniscule package, sometimes no more than a pinpoint, yet from their confines entire trees will emerge, stand for hundreds of years, and produce millions of new seeds of their own.

I also find incredible how the saplings that emerge from the seed is able to take dirt and nutrient from the earth and transform it into stem and leaf. The transformation of material is one of the most strange and mysterious things, and the more we learn of the complex process by how it works the more miraculous it seems.

And here is one more miracle of seeds, most of them have incredible versatility, able to lay in sterile or hostile environments for multiple years, appearing absolutely dead to the world, but will still germinate and grow long after they fell from their parent tree. In some cases, seeds have been known to still grow after laying as a dead husk for more than a thousand years! Somehow they retain the potential for life without food or batteries or nourishment.

When a seed lays dormant, all that it is waiting for is the correct environment. Once it is put in the right levels of moisture, temperature, and oxygen, it finally begins to flourish.

And so it is with people.

I have met men and women who moved through their lives in a catatonic state, feeling useless and reaching for nothing. It can be all too easy to write such people off, to assume that if they have already spent years in this lifeless same state then they will remain there forever.

But these people still have the potential for life—real life. It may be laying dormant inside of them, but that doesn’t mean it is dead. Like a seed, they are often just waiting for the proper environment to flourish, and from what I’ve seen, that proper environment is being brought into the light of God’s love. I have seen how lethargic and passionless men and women fell into the soil of belief, were rained on by the saving power of Jesus Christ, and sprouted towards the sun! Suddenly they wanted to go back to school and get the education they had abandoned, and change jobs for something more purposeful, and begin engaging in their home and family! They started seeing and helping the needy around them, and meeting with their brothers and sisters with sincere purpose, and finding joy and nourishment in the little wonders they had never noticed before.

Not only did they sprout upward, but they also reached further downward, deepening their roots and stability. These people began operating from a seat of power, sure enough to finally thrive.

Before this sprouting, these people appeared to be dead. But they were not dead, they simply hadn’t yet been born. There are many people who are still waiting to start living for the first time, so help plant them somewhere good if you can, somewhere that they can finally open their shell and live.