The Fruit of Our Labor May Not be Ours To Taste
In the Lutheran church body to which I belong (the LCMS), it is common to hear quotes attributed to Martin Luther. However, similar to alleged quotes from Abraham Lincoln and Albert Einstein, it is often hard to confirm the truth or accuracy.
One such quote and associated story is as follows. One day, a person asked Martin Lutheran what he would do today if he knew the world would end tomorrow. In response, Luther allegedly said, “I would plant a tree.” It is a provocative enough tale that I’ve spent far too many hours and years trying to find the source, and it is nowhere to be found in any of Luther’s writings. Granted, I’m probably at a first or second-grade level when it comes to German (and I may be exaggerating when claiming even that level of proficiency), so my search is limited to that which has been translated into English. Nonetheless, I’m increasingly convinced that this quote does not originate with Martin Luther.
Once I finally reached that conclusion, I did not give up on the search. I still wanted to know the origin of the story, so the search continued, and I eventually stumbled upon a Jewish tale about an old man on a hill.
It goes something like this. A significantly older man stood on a hillside, planting seeds for fruit trees. As he did so, a younger man walked by. He asked why the older man was spending what must be his last days planting seeds for trees that would take years to grow and produce fruit, mainly because the man would probably not live long to enjoy the fruit of his labor. In response, the older man explained. I am not planting these seeds for myself but for my son, grandson, great-grandson, and all the family who will come after me. He joyfully devoted his last months and years to work that would outlive him because he understood such labor as an act of love and service to those who would come later.
While this Jewish tale is quite different from the one attributed to Luther, it is close enough that I’ve come to suspect that it may very well be the story that inspired the Luther legend. In addition, it has elements that certainly align with some passages in the Scriptures. I think of verses like Proverbs 13:22, “One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts. A beautiful image of each generation sharing God’s goodness with the next.” Or, consider the words of Deuteronomy 6:6-7, “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous. An encouragement to think beyond our lifetime and invest in future generations.”
The second greatest commandment is to love our neighbors as ourselves. While this relates to loving the neighbors in our own house along with those we see and serve each day, there is also this element of loving neighbors whom we’ve yet to meet—or whom we may never meet during our time on earth. In this sense, the call to love our neighbors can and does entail something akin to the old man planting seeds for the next generation. Some great efforts to the glory of God and the blessing of others may take a lifetime or multiple lifetimes. As such, they benefit from the insight of a story like this. We do not simply work to personally enjoy the fruit of our labor or to help those around us. We also work for those who come after us.
As a leader of an organization, I’ve come to see great wisdom in this long-term perspective. Leadership certainly involves responding to the tyranny of the urgent, balancing budgets, addressing immediate needs, and sometimes even the struggle to help the organization survive so that the mission can persist. Yet, even among such immediate demands on our attention and effort, wise leaders are also thinking about what can be done now that has promise to ensure that the organization continues to serve multiple generations. Long after God calls that leader home, the seeds planted can grow into trees that produce fruit enjoyed by countless others.
Consider this example. I serve at a university that, for most of its existence, was forbidden from direct fundraising by the sponsoring church body. Instead, the church body provided an annual stipend. Yet, when the financial support diminished and eventually stopped altogether, it left the university in a challenging position.
Fortunately, the school was allowed to begin fundraising, and it did so immediately. Thanks to the generosity of many donors, the school has persisted up to today. That was part of addressing an immediate need. Yet, back then, they also began a program that taught students in the university to return to their home congregations over holiday breaks and talk to people about planned giving, including our school in people’s will. Such an effort may not have provided immediate help. Still, over forty years later, the students, staff, and faculty are blessed by millions of dollars in gifts from God at work through these students and donors who heeded the call to make a legacy gift. This type of transformational result can come from planting seeds for the future.
So, what seeds are you planting today? Amid the many demands on your time and effort, what would it take to invest in something God can use to bless those who come after you? While I enjoy seeing the result of hard work, there is also something genuinely inspiring in thinking about how God works through his people over time. The fruit of our labor may not be ours to taste, but what a joy to imagine how God may use it to provide nourishment for generations to come.
Disclaimer: Do you use AI to write the articles on Substack? The words and ideas come from me, but I often use AI for Substack articles. I regularly use Grammarly, which is a form of AI, to aid in proofreading and editing my work. I also regularly use DALL-E to generate the images for most posts. In addition, I continue to evolve in my experimentation with the use of ChatGPT, Grok, CoPilot (and possibly other ChatBots in the future) to serve as an editor for my Substack publications.
What does this mean? There are three common scenarios, though I hope to experiment with others in the future:
I write a full first draft and then submit it to the ChatBot, asking it to serve as an editor, akin to how I have one or more people edit almost anything that is published in my formal capacity, or how editors review my manuscripts when they are submitted to a journal, newspaper, or book publisher.
I audio record myself speaking on a topic and then place the recording in a ChatBot to transcribe, remove disfluencies, and use this rough draft transcript to further refine the writing before publishing it.
I ask the ChatBot for examples, illustrations, or statistics relevant to a topic that I’m exploring in the article, research and review some of the content provided, and sometimes weave those into the writing.
I don’t use all of these methods in every article, but in a spirit of transparency, I offer this disclaimer/clarification.