The Sacrificial Seed: Why Our Legacy is the Only Harvest Death Cannot Confiscate
From my study window here in Akasia, I watch the jacaranda trees—foreigners from another continent, yet now so deeply rooted in Pretoria’s soil that their purple bloom feels like part of our soul. They were planted generations ago by hands that never saw their full majesty. This is the nature of true legacy: a life sown not for its own season, but for seasons yet unseen.
Yet, my friends, we live in an age of instant orchards. We want a sapling planted at dawn to bear fruit by dusk. We see this in our national life: a hunger for immediate solutions to problems woven over centuries. We feel it in our churches, where the deep, slow work of discipleship is often traded for the glittering harvest of crowds. We witness it in our politics, where the next election cycle matters more than the next generation’s foundation. This is the philosophy of the instant harvest. It is a temporal myopia that forgets a fundamental, biblical law: you reap what you sow, but you rarely reap when you sow (Galatians 6:7-9).
So let us define our terms clearly. What is a legacy? In the world’s eyes, it is a monument, a surname on a building, a fortune bequeathed. But in the economy of God’s Kingdom, legacy is something far more potent and personal. It is the living transmission of eternal truth through temporal lives. It is truth, embodied in love, and passed on in faith. It is the shade of a mango tree you will never sit under.
Our Lord Jesus Christ was the master of this principle. His entire earthly ministry was an act of legacy-building. He invested three years in twelve fallible men, knowing full well one would betray Him, all would desert Him, and their understanding was fragile. Why? For the harvest. Not the harvest of palms on the road to Jerusalem, but the harvest of souls from every tribe and tongue that would come through their testimony. He told them plainly, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 11:24). His crucifixion was the ultimate sowing; His resurrection and our salvation are the unending harvest.
A Common Objection and a Timely Parable
A common objection arises, especially in our challenging context: “How can I plant for a forest when I am struggling to survive in the thicket?” The pressure is real. We face daily tsotsis of load-shedding, economic uncertainty, and political strains that threaten to consume all our energy for today. The American tariffs and our exclusion from the coming G20 are not just diplomatic slights; they are economic tremors felt in every township and suburb. In such an environment, survival seems the only sensible creed.
Let me answer with a parable from our own soil. Picture two farmers in the drought-stricken Karoo. The first, facing a dwindling water supply, uses every last drop to irrigate his current crop, desperate for one more yield. The second, with the same meagre supply, does something seemingly foolish. He uses half his water for his wilting plants, and the other half to painstakingly nourish a few, deep-rooted acacia saplings on the edge of his land. The first farmer might eat for another season. But the second farmer is planting for shade, for windbreaks, for a microclimate that will preserve moisture for his grandchildren’s fields. The first lives for the breath of today; the second lives for the wind of the Spirit that blows across generations.
The Cultural Crossroads: Syncretism vs. Substance
This is where our faith faces one of its most subtle and powerful challenges in the African context. Our continent is vibrantly, wonderfully spiritual. But spirituality is not the same as Christianity. There is a grave temptation, as theologian Conrad Mbewe has warned, to simply “add Jesus” to our existing cultural and traditional worldview. To bolt the cross onto the framework of ancestral veneration, spirit appeasement, and a faith that seeks primarily earthly blessing and protection.
This is not legacy-building; this is religious renovation. It produces a faith that is a mile wide and an inch deep—a faith that can fill stadiums but cannot transform character. It offers an instant harvest of emotional comfort but fails to plant the deep, sometimes confrontational, root system of the Gospel that alone yields the fruit of repentance, holiness, and costly love. A legacy built on syncretism is like a tree planted in shallow soil; when the real storms of persecution, doubt, or suffering come, it falls, because it was never rooted in Christ alone (Matthew 7:26-27).
The Anatomy of an Enduring Legacy: A Logical Framework
Therefore, let us construct with clarity what a true, Christian legacy entails. It can be formulated thus:
1. Premise One: Only that which is anchored in eternal, objective truth can endure beyond the temporal.
2. Premise Two: God, His Word, and the human soul fashioned in His image are the only eternal realities in this creation (Psalm 90:2; Genesis 1:27).
3. Premise Three: Therefore, a legacy that endures must be primarily concerned with the propagation of God’s truth and the nurturing of souls toward Him.
This is why the apostle Paul, confronting the deep thinkers in Athens, did not debate the latest Stoic or Epicurean fashion. He anchored his message in the eternal nature of the “unknown God,” the creation of all humanity from one source, and the coming judgement and resurrection through Jesus Christ (Acts 17:22-31). His argument was intellectually robust, but its power was its eternal frame. He was planting sequoias in a garden of annuals.
Our Charge: To Be Sowers in the Southern Soil
So what does this mean for us, here and now? It means the most radical, counter-cultural act you can perform is to live for the invisible harvest.
· In your home, it means patiently teaching your children the Scriptures, not just enforcing rules. It is the difference between giving them a fish for the day and teaching them to fish in the river of life for eternity.
· In your church, it means valuing the quiet disciple who serves for decades over the flashy prophet who promises a breakthrough by Sunday. Support the theological education that builds thinkers, not just feelers. Pray for the “Perspectives Évangéliques Africaines” to take root, fostering a faith that is deeply African yet uncompromisingly biblical.
· In our nation, as we watch the GNU strain and elections loom, it means being citizens who advocate for righteousness, justice, and mercy—the pillars of God’s throne—knowing that political kingdoms are fleeting, but the Kingdom of God is everlasting.
Your life, dear friend, is a seed. You can consume it for your own immediate gratification, or you can, in faith, hand it over to the soil of God’s purpose and die to your own. The instant harvest promises comfort now. The legacy promises shade you will never feel, fruit you will never taste, and a forest of faith that will cover the land long after your name is forgotten.
Choose this day what you will sow. For in the end, a legacy of wisdom is the only wealth that death cannot confiscate. Let us plant mango trees. Let us plant acacias. Let us plant the Word, deep and sure, and water it with our prayers and our tears. And let us trust the Lord of the Harvest with the fruit.
Amen.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gh/podcast/the-legacy-of-planting/id1506692775?i=1000745082737
Comments
Post a Comment