Page 11 - Life is a Fight for Territory

extinguish his enthusiasm, my friend didn’t tell him that this little apple seed was dead. They wrapped it between two damp paper towels and placed it in a dark cupboard, like he had learned at school.
His son was both delighted and amazed when the little seed sprouted in just a few days! His attention span, being typical of most little boys, meant that within a minute of first witnessing his seed’s heroic struggle for life, he was off playing his favorite video game.
Several days after our conversation I was at the grocery store buying fruit and I thought about that story and the apple seed for some time. While it was on the hard, dry kitchen floor it was helpless. It would never grow into anything. It would never DO anything. It would just sit there.
But what really caught my attention was the fact that as soon as it was placed into an environment that was more conducive to its growth, it burst into life. It wasn’t dead after all. The potential was obviously there all along, but you would have never known it to see it squashed in the gap of the floor. Today that seedling is now in a pot with some dirt and is growing into an apple tree, just like his son said it would at the beginning.
It is very natural for the seed to germinate and sprout. It’s very natural for the seedling to grow into a little tree. And it’s very natural for the tree to reach for the sky and grow as big as it possibly can. It doesn’t take effort to grow. It does it because of what it is – a tree!
It may well have been more comfortable sitting on the floor with nothing to do, but that’s not what trees are supposed to 10