Cultivate Conference

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Eastward Missions

Darren Greenfield

Plenary

What a Journey, No Regrets

John Dysinger

Pamela Dysinger

Our Ebenezer

Alan Fisher

Ellen White and the Avondale Agricultural Experience

Theressa Wood

The Secret

Edwin Dysinger

The Garden Paradigm: Dominion in the Image of God

Whitmar McConnell

Seeing What You Look At

The Earth Filled with His Glory

Country Living Forum

Jennifer Dysinger

Missionary Families/Farmers

The Seed Has Germinated, But What Will Be the Fruit?

Growing... in the Dark

General Forum


Okay, growing, growing in the dark. Growing stuff. It's a part of many of our, many of us who are here, it's a part of our day, is it not? Every day, almost every 1 of us is involved in some form or fashion probably in growing stuff. Some of us on a very small scale and some of us on a very, very big scale.

But as we move through the motions of growing stuff, I wonder how often, how often do we miss the miracle of the moment? Like when you've just gone out and you've seen that the last seed raising tray that you just last sowed has germinated overnight. Does that just catch your breath in awe? Does it make you go wow? I hope it does because it's a miracle.

It's a miracle. Every seed that germinates is a miracle. What about when you're out picking your abundant harvest? Does it make you go, wow, thank you Lord. Do you pause in the moment just to lift your eyes to heaven and say, wow, thank you, Lord.

Thank you for the growth. I hope you do. I believe that plants, the world of growing stuff in the soil speaks as much of the splendour of God as the heavens do. But I know life is busy and I know that sometimes these moments simply pass us by, But right now you are not busy. Right now you're not going anywhere.

So can you just pause for a moment with me to just wonder in the miracle of growth? We're going to start simple. We're going to pretend we're in school just for a moment. What do plants do during the day? Photosynthesise, exactly.

That's their main mission during the day is to simply stand there underneath the blue, blue sky and the sunshine and to catch as much of the light to take up the water, use the carbon dioxide that they've taken into themselves and convert it all into this beautiful yummy stuff called sugar and give out oxygen. Like that there is just wow. I mean really how many of you can take a molecule of water and split it so that then you can provide something as life-giving as oxygen. That's a miracle. That is something only God can do.

And that itself makes me go, wow. What about the rest of it? Carbon dioxide and the way that it takes like a waste product and turns it into something yummy like sugar. You know, the process of photosynthesis is an absolute miracle. That was a crash course in photosynthesis.

We don't have time. We don't have time. We're going to move on from that was the day life in brief and we're going to move on and look at the life of a plant in the evening and eventually the life of the plant at night. So in the evening, after it's done all that photosynthesis, what does the plant do? Well, it's had its busy day, it's created a bountiful supply of the photosynthase, And of an evening, a plant actually drops 20 to 30% of the carbohydrates, the sugars that it's formed, down into its root zone.

So 20 to 30% of it goes down, down, down into the root. It doesn't keep all of it up in the plant. And why does it do this? It does this because it's going to now feed the microorganisms that are down in the soil. There are a multitude of microorganisms that are really close to the root zone and the plant's going to feed these beautiful yummy sugars onto the microorganisms.

Why? Because those good microorganisms are the friends of the plant and they are in turn going to feed the plant. Because it's the microorganisms that can make the minerals in the soil more plant available. So in return, the microbes feed the plant. It is an absolutely beautiful system.

1 of, I guess what Darren was talking about yesterday, how there are all these cycles that God has built into nature that continually serve each other in this beautiful way for us to see and it's that concept of freely you have received and freely give. Ellen White talks about the cycle of beneficence and it's that same concept that we see just simply of an evening when the plants are gifting some of their sugars down to the microorganisms, the microorganisms feeding the plant in return. And I think it's just beautiful because God is a God of order And the way that we see God working here in just this tiny little slither of nature, it shows 1 of not just self-protection and hoarding and taking for ourselves, which we as humans tend to do too much of, but it's 1 of abundance. It's a picture of abundance, it's a picture of sharing, it's a picture of giving that happens beneath our feet. It's beautiful, God's ways are beautiful.

Okay, now all of that was fascinating. We've covered in brief the day life of a plant, we've covered in brief the evening life of a plant, but where we are going is into the night life of a plant. 1 night I woke up suddenly, like boom! I was sound asleep 1 minute and next thing I was wide, wide awake. And I wasn't just awake, I was awake with a question already racing around in my mind.

It was crazy. I cannot explain why this happened. And the question that was running around in my mind for whatever reason was, why do plants do at night? And I don't know why that happened. And I lay there in bed thinking, oh, sleep would have been better.

But here I am wide awake and wondering what do plants do at night? And I lay there thinking, yeah, well, plants grow at night, don't they? So why am I thinking about it? But I couldn't drop it. I couldn't drop it.

In the morning, in the day, I thought I'm going to have to research this. I'm going to have to find out more information to answer my questions. And so I did. And what I learned made me go, wow. Wow.

It is true that plants grow at night. They take those photosynthates, those sugars that they've formed during the day, and all the minerals that the microbes have fed back to them, and they do, they grow at night. They grow, grow, grow while you, the gardener, sleeps. But there's more to it than that. I actually had the privilege of watching online a video of a pumpkin that had been taken on time-lapse and they'd taken it over a series of days and nights so you could watch the pumpkin growing.

Unfortunately I was unable to download the video because of the quality of it, it just wasn't going to show very well on the screen. But, the good news is that I think I can demonstrate to you how the pumpkin grows. You will need to use your imagination. I have a pumpkin here in my hands. Okay, I think this shows it precise enough.

You need your imagination and I need you to imagine for a moment that when I am blowing it's night time and when I take a breath it's day time. Can you imagine that? Okay, ready? Okay, ready? Pfff.

Pfff. Pfff. Pfff. You got it, you got the idea. Would you agree that the pumpkin grows in leaps and jumps?

Yeah. Did it grow more at night? Interesting. As I said before, growth happens in the night shift. Do you?

Do you grow more at night? What I mean is, do you grow spiritually when all is just well, light and easy like the daytime around you? Or do you grow spiritually when you are walking through the darkness, through the darkness of the unknown, the valley of the shadow? Do you grow most in the trials of life? When you are hard pressed on every side, when you are walking by faith and not by sight, When you're pressed so tightly into the side of God that you are forced to trust in his realness, even though you cannot see him or feel him.

Earlier this year I went through a trial that absolutely flattened me. We all have our ups and our downs, don't we? Like every day, every week, we have the ups and the downs of life but every now and then in life you go through a crisis And this was 1 of those. And daily I was pressed into a very, very painful situation and I was in a very dark place and I grew by the grace of God. Spiritually I grew so close to God, I started every day and I ended every day in a bucket of tears.

But it was in this dark place that I wrote the words of something that 1 day might be a song. The chorus is, let it be, let it be, and I will praise you. Let it be and just hold my hand. Let it be and draw me closer. Lord let it be.

I guess my spiritual growth was so just real and so tangible and I was so close to the sight of God, even though it hurt, I didn't want it to end. Does that make sense? I felt like the pumpkin growing in the dark, growing in the dark. And I've got this funny feeling that you each identify with what I'm saying because we've all been there, growing in the dark. It's because of this that Romans says we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance and perseverance character, and character hope, and hope does not disappoint.

The Bible repeats itself in James, in a different sort of way, but saying the same thing, counted all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. Let Patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect, complete and lacking nothing. Did you catch the last few words of that verse? Perfect, complete, lacking nothing. You know I'm not talking here about just an average-sized pumpkin with an average-sized flavour.

I'm talking here about a prize-winning-sized pumpkin with a heavenly high-bricks flavour. You know, we can be confident that he who has begun a good work is going to complete it. Amen? That is, complete it to the point of perfect, complete and lacking nothing. And this is what God is doing in you and in me.

Praise God for trials. Praise God for the dark. Praise God who somehow works everything together for good. Praise God for growth, for spiritual growth. Praise God who helps us to grow, to grow in the dark.

But there is more. There is so much more about this growing in the night phenomenon. Remember I said that when I looked into it, I went, wow. God's world of nature is deeply fascinating and I believe it's designed to make us go wow. Why?

Because it brings glory to him. Some researchers in Norwich at the John Innes Centre have been studying a plant, it's a plant from the mustard family, and they've made some discoveries that have made them go, well, It's astonished them. They say it's mind boggling what they have learned about plants and the way they grow at night. They've actually discovered that plants have this inbuilt ability to do maths, specifically division. How does this work?

In the night time while you are snoring, plants actually have the ability to calculate the optimum rate at which they need to take up and absorb the photosynthates, the sugars that they've made during the day. And this is what gives way to that amazing flush of growth that we see overnight, like I was showing you with the pumpkin. So how do they do it? How do they do this calculation? Basically, simply, as simply as possible, the plant has the ability to kind of measure the amount of sugars that are in the plant at the end of the day.

I guess in a way they're able to sort of quantify the amount, because every day it's going to be different depending on the amount of light that they've been exposed to during the day. So at the end of the day they're able to quantify that. And that is, we're going to call that s, s for sugars or starch, whatever you want to call it. And then because they've kind of got like an internal body clock, like you and I have an internal body clock, and of course it runs on a 24-hour cycle, just like ours does, They're then able to also quantify time, so T stands for time. And this has to do with how many hours of light the plant has been exposed to.

And so then it is able to figure out how many hours of darkness is coming its way. Is that making sense? I hope so. And then basically it takes the concentration of these molecules, for want of a better term, to then determine how quickly or slowly it's going to need to use up the photosynthase that it has stored in its system. So basically the quantity of S molecules will speed up or stimulate the breakdown of the starch that needs to go into the growth of the plant and the amount of T molecules kind of slows the process down.

So basically what happens is this formula here, S divided by T, and so then the plant is able to use up its stores overnight at just the right rate. Because if it was to use up its photosynthates too quickly overnight, it might get to the middle of the night, have used up all its stores and still have many more hours of darkness until the sun wakes up in the morning. Does that make sense? It's very, very clever, but of course if they use them up too slowly, then they'll get to the morning time and they'll have some left over that they could have put into growth. I hope you're tracking with me.

The calculations are so precise that by dawn, when you, the gardener, is just crawling out of bed, the plants have actually used up 95% of their stores. They have a fraction left over for an emergency. Isn't God good? You know it's so, so clever. But that's God, isn't it?

What was even more fascinating than that was when the researchers started fiddling and they changed the amount of night time that the plant had to go through. So what they did is they shortened the day, therefore shortening the light period, and they made the plant go through a longer night? And what was it the plant was able to do the maths? The plant was still able to only use 95% of their stores by morning, the very next morning. Now, I don't know if any of you are struggling with this, so I'm going to give you a little illustration.

Can you imagine with me that these marbles here are the supplies of the photosynthates that the plant has to use up for the night. Okay, so on a normal night the plant is going to use them up at this sort of a rate. Okay, you're tracking with that sort of speed. On a night where the hours of light are less, this is what the researchers did, so therefore the hours of night are going to be longer, the plant used the stores more slowly, like this. Is that making sense?

Yes. So what do you suppose happened on the night when the researchers gave them more light during the day, the plant knew that it was going to have less darkness that night. So what did the plant do? It used them up quickly. Yeah?

Amazing. And you know, I'm not trying to suggest here that plants have intelligence and that wasn't what the researchers were trying to suggest, that plants have intelligence. It's just simply suggesting that there is a mechanism inside plants that give them the ability to automatically regulate how fast they burn the carbohydrates at night. But who put that in the plant? God did.

So why am I rambling on about this while you are wanting to get out to breakfast and the clock's against me and your stomachs are rumbling? Okay, can we momentarily step away from the book of nature for a minute and just consider what it says in the Word of God. I don't have time to open it for you, but you know in Matthew 6 where it talks about worry. And the lilies of the field, yes, why worry? Because God knows what he's doing.

Instead of me reading it from the Word of God, can I just rephrase it in my words? Why worry? Consider any plant how they grow at night. If God can build mind-boggling mathematical mechanisms to care for the needs of the grass of the field. Can't he look after you?

God is so good to us and we just don't get it. He has every little bit of our lives in his care, in his hands and we often don't realise that enough, we often don't trust him enough, We worry and we stress and we fret way too much. Honestly, if God can look after the growth of the plants at night to this sort of point where he just leaves them every night, no matter what, having used 95% of their stores and still have a little bit left over. Don't you think He can look after you in our times of darkness too? In 1 Corinthians 10, 13 it says, God is faithful.

He will not let you be tempted beyond what you are able. Just like God knows how much starch a plant has and how many hours of night it has ahead of it, and he gives the plants the capacity to see the night out without using up all of its resources, that same God knows how much you can handle. He knows your strengths, he knows your weaknesses, he knows your character, he knows what needs pruning, he knows what needs growing. He who began a good work in you is trying to accomplish it, He's going to complete it but sometimes the best of his work is done in the dark. Trust him.

Trust him because he is faithful. In Ephesians it speaks of being mature, fully grown up in the Lord, measuring up to the full stature of Christ. God's going to keep you growing, growing until you've reached full maturity, and that is to be like Jesus. And I think if that's where my growth is headed, I've got a lot more growing to do, And probably a lot more dark trials ahead, but I know I can trust. I can trust God.

So my challenge to each of you, farmers, gardeners, agrarian wannabes, fellow diggers in the dirt. When you're out surveying the growth that you see every day, or perhaps every night, just please take a moment to pause and praise God for it. And when you see what God can do in your plants, you'll find, I pray, reason to trust that same God in the dark times of your life and praise him for the miracle of the growth in your life even in the dark. Let's pray. Loving Heavenly Father, you're so good to us.

You're so good to all your creation and we see your fingerprint everywhere. Help us to trust you because you are faithful and trustworthy. We love you and we thank you for all the multitude of ways that you make this abundantly clear to us. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen. And much more.

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Series

Plenary

Growing... in the Dark

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Other Teachings in Series

What a Journey, No Regrets

Our Ebenezer

Ellen White and the Avondale Agricultural Experience

The Secret

The Garden Paradigm: Dominion in the Image of God

Seeing What You Look At

The Earth Filled with His Glory

Country Living Forum

Missionary Families/Farmers

The Seed Has Germinated, But What Will Be the Fruit?

Growing... in the Dark

General Forum

Sound Doctrine