Diaspora: Scattering the Seeds of Promise

In my journey more recently, I have felt prompted by God to not just write about the pictures and insights He gives me, but to also put them into picture form. The material for this blog comes from two such incidents with the Lord.

The first was reading James 1, where the word “diaspora” jumped out at me. Its root meaning is to scatter, and the painting is a representation of what I sensed. The second situation was making marmalade from some grapefruit I picked up from a food swap. Three small grapefruit were full of more seeds than I’ve ever seen, in fact, by my reckoning, there were probably around 100. As I have sat with these two messages about seeds, this is where I have landed.

DIASPORA – The Scattering

Many of us have felt scattered in the last couple of years. However, I believe the Lord is within the scattering, and if we are willing to partner with Him, He is using it so His people can take the DNA of His Kingdom out with them to wherever they land. It may be uncomfortable and not what we would really like, but it is time to let go, just like the seed in the seed head. To stay is counterproductive.

We may have thought we were blooming where we were planted, but this was just the beginning. That season has ended, and now a new one begins.

And the seeds we are carrying are abundant in number and extremely fruitful, “bearing one hundred, sixty or thirty times more”, (Mark 4:20). The growth in productiveness will be exponential. The words He gave me were that these were “Seeds of Promise”. Romans 8:24 also came to mind: “But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?” The promise will come because “He who promised is faithful”, (Hebrews 10:23). The seeds are not the end product, but hold promise for what will come (the fruit) and these seeds (His blueprints, ideas, new placements) come with a promise of great fruitfulness, if we are willing to step out into the new.

So, don’t fight the scattering, little seeds, but go out, knowing He is with you and He is for you, and where He takes you, He will provide. He is expanding His people explosively. The stretching can feel painful and scary, but in the stretching there is multiplication. And while you might feel like a little shrivelled seed, and while it might feel like dying, remember two things. First, our Lord Jesus said “Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies it bears no fruit” (John 12:24). Secondly, while we might be able to count the number of seeds in a piece of fruit, no one knows how many fruit are in each one of those seeds. His call to each of us is, “Go forth and multiply!”