Faith and Mustard Seeds

Even though I have retired from my career in education, I still work a couple of days a week at my former school as a tutor. One day I went to work wearing a necklace with a mustard seed pendant - a gift from my late daughter-in-law.

A mustard seed is a symbol of faith. In Matthew 17:20, Jesus told his disciples, “If you have faith like a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.” I’ve heard it said that faith has to be planted as a mustard seed is planted. Faith requires action, not just mental agreement.

When my lunch break came, I walked into the teacher’s lounge and noticed a silver chain on the table. I instinctively reached up to my neck and found that my necklace was not there. I began looking around the room for the pendant, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. As some of the other tutors and teachers came into the room, they helped me look for it under furniture and behind doors, but we had no success.

I knew that in a busy school building that is cleaned every evening; the custodian was likely to sweep up and discard such a tiny item, never even noticing it in the rest of the debris. I put the chain back around my neck and believed I would never see that pendant again.

Then, about a month later, I received a Facebook message from another tutor. It said, “Are you at the school today? If not, could you stop by? I think I have something for you.”

Of course, my first thought was that she had found the mustard seed. What else could she just “think” she had for me, other than something she had never actually seen? Sure enough, while monitoring a student who was taking a test, she began pacing in the conference room next to the lounge, out of sheer boredom. Something shiny in a dusty corner caught her eye, and she remembered my pendant and went to investigate. There it was, ready to be returned to me.

The last few years have been extremely difficult and challenging for me. I’ve been thro ugh grief, stress, financial issues, medical issues, and have been “ghosted” by someone close to me for no apparent reason. It’s been difficult sometimes to find my faith. It got lost in the dusty corners of difficulty and circumstance, but just like my work friend found the pendant and returned it to me, many friends and family members have encouraged me and helped me to find it again every time discouragement has come my way.

As Christians, we have a responsibility to hold one another up and to encourage others to walk out their purpose. We also have a responsibility to ourselves to “stir up the gift” within us, as Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:6. God used the necklace story to remind me of these two responsibilities in my life. Maybe this will remind you too.