Winnowing Out the Chaff

The Lemon Queen Sunflowers we planted were nice.  They had multiple flowering seed heads and filled the garden with yellow flowers.  Check out a photo of them FROM THIS POST BACK IN JUNE.  The flowers faded from their once glorious state and I clipped them from the stalks and let them dry on the patio.  The seeds were open-pollinated and I wanted to save some seeds for planting even more next year.  

Dried Lemon Queen Sunflower Heads

Observing the patterns of nature is, to me, evidence of God.  He is a God of order and He created things of beauty and was intentional in His design.  You can praise Him by singing, or in prayer, or by admiring His creation.

Genesis 1:12 The earth produced vegetation - seed bearing plants...

I pulled the dried seeds from the sunflower heads, but immediately found that I had a problem.  Intermixed with the sunflower seeds, was chaff - a lot of it.  "Well, this is no good, I thought."

Chaff mixed with sunflower seeds

In the past, with other type seeds, I've run them through a sieve and the smaller seeds fall through the sieve, leaving behind the chaff in the sieve.  It wasn't a perfect process, but the resulting seeds were relatively clean.  That process does not work with larger seeds like sunflower seeds.  What could I do?

And then I had a brainstorm of sorts.  In the Bible, there is the following verse:

Matthew 3:12 King James Version (KJV)

Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

And there was my answer!  I positioned a pan in front of a fan and began dropping handfuls of chaff-seed mix down into the pan with the fan blowing on the high setting:

Separating the "wheat" from the chaff

The fan blew away the lighter chaff, along with seeds that had nothing inside.  It made a real mess on the cement floor of the garage...

But the winnowing process yielded clean seed.  I was impressed with the finished product!:

Clean Seed

The old fan was in the barn to cool us off during the hot summer milking.  Recently, however, the mosquitoes have been thick by the back door.  Every time we open the door, those boogers fly in and bite us all night.  Tricia has positioned the fan to blow mosquitoes away from the door.  That fan played double duty - blowing away mosquitoes and blowing away the chaff.

I'm a fan of our old fan

These seeds will be stored away for next year's crop.

I labeled the container and dated it and will store them in a dark, dry spot.  If anyone wants some, just let me know.

So while the winnowing process learned from the Bible worked remarkably well to clean my seeds, I didn't want to miss out on the spiritual concept contained in the verse.  Do you see this farmer in Jean-Francois Millet's painting below?:

Image Credit

He is doing (manually) what I was doing with my Lasko fan.  The heavy seeds fall into the basket while the lighter chaff blows away.  In Matthew 3 John the Baptist was telling that the Kingdom of God was at hand.  He was preparing the people for the Messiah and telling them to repent.  He was likening the winnowing of grain the the coming judgment.  He was contrasting the truly repentant (the heavier wheat) against the Pharisees and Sadducees (the chaff).  The wheat would be brought into His barn, while the chaff would be burned in a fire.

He wishes that no man should perish.  I desire to be like the wheat and not the chaff.