Are You Burying or Planting?

There is a difference in burying and planting.

If it’s Treasure, we may bury it, hoping to come back one day and retrieve it. We hide it for what we believe will be safe keeping.

Sometimes we bury things to hide their decay. We don’t plan to dig them up again.

Burying is not an investment. What we bury will either remain as it is or decay.

Planting also involves putting something in the ground. But we do so with anticipation that it will become much more than what we put there.

Planting is an act of faith and surrender to God, The Only One who can create life in that which appears dead … The Only One who can turn something small and ugly into something large and beautiful.

Planting is something we do, not just for ourselves, but with the hope of sharing with others. Planting is an investment in the future.

Jesus told the very graphic story of a man who entrusted his wealth to each of his three servants. You can read the full story in Matthew 25:14-30.

Two of the servants invested what he gave them.

“They went at once and put his money to work and gained” more.
Matthew 25:16

When the master returned, they were able to happily report how much the original had grown. They had not buried it. They had planted it. They were ready to celebrate the harvest with their master.

But the third servant buried what the master had given him. He had nothing to show for what the master had entrusted to him. His explanation revealed a lot about his attitude toward his master.

He said, “I knew you were a hard man, harvesting where you had not sown and gathering where you had not scattered seed. So I was afraid and I went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.”
Matthew 25:24-25

This servant did not trust his master. He thought he took things away unfairly. He thought he would not provide for him. He was afraid.

The master was not pleased. Matthew 25:26-30 records the chilling words of the master. He made it very clear that he had expected his resources to be invested. More than that, he expected his investment of trust in his servant to be returned.

It is easy to read this story and shake our heads at the behavior of the fearful , distrustful servant. How could he have acted that way?

And yet, recently as I looked at the mountain of things in our basement, I realized I am not that far away from this servant. We buried what The Lord has given us.

In painful Truth, we saved things in case The Lord would not provide more. We saved things for a “rainy day” while others were having a rainy day right now.

We held on to things that somehow seemed our pathway to yesterday’s memories. In the end, holding the things could not bring back those we loved. Those seasons have passed.

We buried things because of a kind of paralysis of indecision. We could not use them, but we couldn’t bear to let them go either.

We stopped the flow of God’s Provision because we did not see that our stuff was not “our” stuff at all. The resources God gave us were seeds. God expected them to be planted, not buried.

We have now begun the process of emptying our basement. It has been a process.

We began by thanking God for having provided so generously to us.

We asked God’s Forgiveness for stopping the flow of His Provision.

We are praying about where He wants us to relocate His Resources.

As He directs, we are relinquishing our hold on things, sometimes in tears, because we are giving up some things that have been treasures to us.

But we are letting go, knowing God is creating something beautiful. He is allowing us to work on His Delivery Team and bring blessings to others. We are confident God is at work.

It turns out we are not giving up our treasures after all. We are relocating them!

“Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven … for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
Matthew 6:20-21