I get some of my best ideas in the shower or out on a run.
Neither is a particularly convenient place to capture a thought, so every now and then I’ll grab my phone, open the Notes app, type something quickly, and move on with my day. Most of the time I completely forget about it.
Then months later I’ll stumble across something and wonder where it came from.
Recently, I found a note that simply said:
“I do know one thing about God. He likes watching things grow.”
I honestly don’t remember writing it.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I started picturing a packet of seeds sitting on a shelf at a garden store. Everything that seed is ever going to become is already inside it. The flower. The fruit. The color. The shape. The potential is there from the beginning.
Yet for a while, it just sits.
Nothing appears to be happening.
Then one day someone takes the packet home and plants the seed.
What struck me was how little control the seed has over the process. It doesn’t decide where it gets planted. It doesn’t determine the weather. It doesn’t choose how much rain falls or how many sunny days are ahead.
What it does need are the right conditions.
Good soil.
Enough water.
Enough sunlight.
Room to grow.
And before anything visible happens, there is an entire season of rooting.
The seed isn’t worried about producing fruit. It isn’t trying to become a mature plant by next Tuesday. It is simply doing the next thing required for growth.
For some reason, we humans make this much harder than it needs to be.
We become consumed with the outcome. We want to know where we’re headed, how long it will take, what the final result will look like, and whether we’re making progress fast enough. We compare our growth to someone else’s growth. We become frustrated by seasons that feel slow.
Maybe we’re more like seeds than we’d like to admit.
We spend so much time worrying about the fruit that we forget there are entire seasons dedicated to rooting. Seasons where growth is happening beneath the surface. Seasons where nothing appears to be changing, yet everything important is taking place.
The seed isn’t questioning whether it will eventually become what it was created to be. It simply continues growing.
I find that comforting.
And maybe that’s why I loved that note so much when I found it again.
Because I do think God likes watching things grow.
I think He likes watching people discover gifts they didn’t know they had. I think He likes watching courage develop, relationships deepen, faith mature, and purpose unfold over time.
Most of all, I think He knows what is already inside the seed.
Even when the seed doesn’t.