Ever been to Ridgeway, S.C.?  On Main Street there’s an old general store a friend of mine told me about.  I went up there because I wanted to see such a store.  While I was there, I bought a pair of overalls because I thought they would make a perfect souvenir from an old country store.  The store turned out to be as neat as I had hoped – unpainted, unvarnished floors, an old skylight, shelves full of every imaginable item of clothing, farm implement, and kitchenware. It was a lot like a museum where everything was for sale.  I’ve never forgotten it.

            Years later a man named John Ruff joined our church and mentioned he was from Ridgeway.  I started talking about this store and he said, “That’s my store.  It’s been in my family forever.  Come back and I’ll show you around.”  I took him up on it.  Back in the warehouse of the store I ran across a seed rack that he said was from the 1800’s.  Think of that.  Tomato seeds, turnip seeds, watermelon seeds all sitting around with perfect potential but never producing anything.  As the Lord Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies it will bear much fruit” (John 12:24).  We have the seeds of the Gospel in our Bibles and, if we are converted, in our hearts, souls, and minds.  At the end of your life will the seed God has placed in your life look like Mr. Ruff’s seed rack – interesting, old, and unused – or will it look like well used, sown, and multiplied sources of joy in eternal life in the lives of the people with whom you shared them?