The Trellis and the Seed
A Book of Encouragement for All Ages
By Jan Karon
The little seed felt warm in the Nice Lady’s hand. Someone had given it to her at the end of summer, because she had a garden and loved flowers.
“Here,” they said, “this will make a beautiful vine with sweet-smelling blossoms.”
The little seed, however, did not believe this. It was only a seed, and very, very small. How could it ever be a beautiful vine with blossoms?
The little seed spent the winter in a jelly glass on the top shelf of a china cupboard. When spring came, the Nice Lady went out and bought a trellis for the seed.
A whole trellis for one tiny seed!
Then she took down the glass and ran a bit of water into it, so the seed could soak.
“This will make you soft and help you sprout faster,” she said.
The Nice Lady went to her early spring garden and found just the right place for the trellis.
She put it deep into the ground by her brick wall. At the base, she made a tiny hole with her finger. Then she went inside and picked up the seed, which has grown soft from soaking.
She took it to the garden. She put in in the hole. She said, “Good-bye! See you this summer!” Then she filled the small hole with dirt and patted it firmly with her hand.
Though being someplace soft felt nice for a change, it was dark in the hole. It was cold in the hole.
Don’t worry, said the Earth. God has planned something beautiful for you. You will be a green vine with blossoms that scent the air with sweep perfume.
There it was again. That story about vines and blossoms! The little seed did not believe it.
Days passed. The sun shone and the rain fell. And then there was a stir in the small, dark hole. First something happened at the bottom of the little seed.
It felt like a tickle.
Then , something happened at the top of the little seed. It felt like a kiss.
Then rain fell. The sun shone. The days grew warm. Soon there was no more seed. Instead, there was a small green sprout.
“Hello!” said the Nice Lady. “I knew you’d soon be up and about! Now, if you’ll just climb this trellis, I shall be pleased as anything!”
Climb the trellis? How could a small sprout climb a trellis that was a million trillion feet high?
Just start, said the Earth. The job is half done when you’ve made a beginning.
For many days, thunder shook the heavens. Water stood in puddles in the garden. The little sprout thought it might drown. And then the sun came out. It shone and shone.
While the sprout was scarcely paying attention, it became a vine. The vine stretched out a green, curling tendril. It touched something that didn’t feel soft like dirt or warm like sun.
For a moment, it was afraid of anything that felt so different, and tried to pull its tendril back. But it was stuck to the trellis. There was only one thing to do. It began to climb.
It couldn’t help climbing! It couldn’t stop climbing! It climbed to the right and climbed to the left. It danced out into the air where there was no trellis at all.
Then one day, it couldn’t climb any higher. It tried and tried to reach the top of the trellis, but nothing worked. Its glossy leaves drooped. Its tendrils lost their lively curl.
The Nice Lady came out and, humming a little tune, sprinkled something smelly around the roots of the vine. Then she worked it into the earth with her spade. “There!” she said to the vine. “That should be delicious!”
Soon afterward, a summer shower swept over the garden. And suddenly, the top of the trellis didn’t seem so far away, after all.
Foxgloves and hollyhocks blossomed by the doorstep. Cosmos and lavender bordered the path. Old- fashioned roses twined up an arbor, spilling petals onto ruffled petunias.
In the Nice Lady’s garden, everything was blooming. Everything but the vine on the trellis.
Though it had climbed all the way to the top of the trellis and started up the brick wall, it felt very disappointed. For it knew, at last, that the story about fragrant blossoms wasn’t true at all.
Wait, said the Earth. God’s timing for you is different.
That evening, a full moon appeared in the cloudless sky. It rose slowly over the Nice Lady’s house, turning the garden path into a ribbon of silver.
The vine felt the soft moonlight steal among its leaves.
Something happened that felt like a tickle.
Then something happened that felt like a kiss.
Soon the Nice Lady appeared in her nightdress and bare feet, walking on the silver ribbon.
“What’s going on? She asked the garden. “A wondrous fragrance awakened me and called me to come out!”
She followed the scent until she came to the trellis. There, half hidden among the leaves, she saw dozens of ivory blossoms unfolding on the vine. As each blossom opened, a heavenly aroma escaped upon the air, bathing the garden with sweet perfume.
The Nice Lady looked on in amazement. She could hardly believe that so much beauty and mystery had come from one tiny seed.
“I just knew you were going to be something wonderfully different!” she exclaimed.
Happily she twined an ivory blossom in her hair. She tucked another in a buttonhole of her nightdress.
She picked an especially beautiful bloom to put by her bed in a painted china cup.
“Thank you!” she said, filled with admiration.
As she walked back to her house on the silver ribbon, a shiver of joy stirred in the vine that blooms only at night-the vine whose lovely name is Moonflower.
And over the Nice Lady’s garden, there was stillness and peace.
In this gentle tale, Jan Karon offers her readers a parable about the rewards that come from being a little bit different form everyone else.
I love this book and the message it imparted to me and I hope imparts to you.
Don’t be afraid to be different. God has a special plan for each and every one of us who believe in Him.
We may not think so, just like the little seed, and even when things do start to stir in us, we may still not be quite convinced, as was the vine. But then when God makes His plan known to us, then is when we finally believe and understand. How wonderful would it be to believe from the beginning and to have faith and trust in God, that what He promises will come to pass.