Give Me Your Little: Revisiting the Sunflower That Taught Me About Seeds
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Two Septembers ago, I stood in my kitchen laughing and crying at the same time, holding a handful of sunflower seeds I never expected to see. I wrote about it then, but this year — as I’ve been saving seeds from the summer’s best plants for next year’s garden — I keep coming back to that story. Some lessons don’t finish teaching you the first time.
The Sunflower I Almost Gave Up On
At the beginning of that garden season, I’d started some sunflowers — my favorite flower, if I’m honest. But I got busy right when they popped up, and my neglect during those first tender weeks did what neglect usually does. All but one died. And the one I salvaged was barely holding on — wilted, small, hardly worth the pot it was sitting in.
I was going to throw it out. It won’t make a difference, I told myself. It’s so small, so wilted, it can’t possibly survive the heat of summer or produce anything. But something in me — what I still believe, two years later, was a nudge from God — said to give it a shot anyway. I remembered a message He’d repeated over me more than once: “Give me your little, broken, and barely surviving, and I will return to you life and life abundant.” So I planted that barely-alive flower in a pot and told the Creator to do His thing.
What That Little Flower Grew Into
That sunflower grew to almost seven feet tall. Vibrant. Full of life. When it was finally ready to harvest, I stood there collecting seeds, astonished — one small, struggling seed had produced a flower that was now handing back a hundred more. As I stood in my kitchen laughing, I heard God say, plainly, “I told you to give me your little, and I would in turn give you much.”
I’ve thought about that harvest more than once this year, especially now, saving seeds from this season’s best plants the way I do every September. There’s something about holding seeds in your hand that puts you right back in that posture — small, uncertain, trusting something you can’t fully see yet.
Why I’m Telling You This Again
Our theme this month is about gathering the threads — coming home, sorting what we’ve collected, saving what’s worth carrying forward. Seed saving isn’t just a garden task on this homestead; it’s become a spiritual rhythm. Every seed I tuck into an envelope this September is a small act of faith that next year is coming, that what looked wilted and unworthy this year might be exactly what produces abundance next season.
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up (Galatians 6:9). That verse has never felt more literal to me than it did holding those sunflower seeds.
If you’ve got something in your life right now that feels too small, too wilted, too far gone to bother saving — I hope this old story finds you at the right time. God isn’t asking for your best. He’s asking for your little. And He is faithful, every single time, to give back more than we handed Him.
Save What’s Worth Saving
This week, as we save seeds from the garden’s best plants, I’m setting aside a few sunflower seeds too — not from that original flower (those are long planted and re-planted by now), but from its descendants. A small, ongoing act of remembering what one barely-alive plant became.
