Finally, one day, I asked him, “If I have done everything I reasonably can, what do I do when nothing seems to change?”
He looked at me thoughtfully. “How do you know they haven’t?”
I smiled. “I think I would know.”
“Would you?”
His question caught me by surprise.
He continued: “When you speak to someone today, when do you expect the change to happen?”
I thought about it. “Now,” I admitted.
He smiled and said, “Most of us do.” Then he leaned back in his chair. “But human beings rarely change that way.”
I asked him what he meant.
“Think about your own life,” he said. “How many of your deepest convictions were formed the very first time you heard them?”
I searched my memory. Very few. Most of the ideas that had shaped my life had returned again and again over the years. Sometimes they appeared in conversations. Sometimes in books. Sometimes through painful experiences. Often I didn’t appreciate their significance until much later.
He seemed to read my thoughts. “Influence usually works quietly,” he said. “It settles before it grows.”
That explained something I had never understood. I had been treating every important conversation as though it were a final examination. If nothing changed immediately, I assumed the conversation had failed. Perhaps that was never a fair expectation.
He smiled as though remembering something. “Many years ago,” he said, “someone gave me advice that I completely ignored.”
“What happened?”
“I repeated the same mistake for years.”
“And then?”
“One day I found myself remembering his words almost exactly.”
“What had changed?”
“I had.”
The simplicity of the answer stayed with me.
The words had been waiting long before I was ready to receive them. Perhaps that is true more often than we realize. Sometimes we are planting thoughts in ground that has not yet been prepared. That does not mean the seed is wasted. It simply means it has not yet found its season.
He must have noticed the image forming in my mind. “Think of a farmer,” he said. “He prepares the soil. He plants the seed. He waters it. He protects it from weeds.” He looked at me. “Does he then stand over the field demanding that the seed grow before sunset?”
I laughed and said, “Of course not.”
“Why not?”
“Because growth doesn’t happen that way.”
He nodded. “Then why do we expect people to?”
I had never connected the two. A farmer works faithfully because he understands that growth follows its own rhythm. He cannot manufacture life. He can only create the conditions in which life may flourish.
Perhaps influence works the same way. We prepare the soil with kindness. We plant truth with sincerity. We water it with patience. We protect the relationship with respect. But the growth itself comes from a place beyond our control.
That realization transformed the way I looked at time. Every sincere conversation no longer had to produce an immediate result. Every act of kindness no longer had to receive an immediate response. No longer did every piece of advice have to be accepted before I could consider it worthwhile. Some seeds germinate quickly. Others remain hidden for years. Yet both are still seeds.
Before we left, he said something I doubt I will ever forget. “You are not called to manufacture change.” He paused, and then added, “You are called to remain faithful in your influence.”
As I walked home, I realized that hope looks different now. It is no longer the anxious hope that insists on immediate results. It is the quieter hope that trusts sincere effort is never wasted, even when its fruit remains invisible.
Now, whenever I find myself becoming impatient with someone I care about, I picture the farmer. He is not idle. He works diligently. But he also knows when to stop striving and simply wait. Perhaps that is what patient influence looks like. We prepare. We plant. We nurture. And then we entrust the growth to the One who alone can bring it forth.
There is great peace in becoming a faithful farmer of souls instead of trying to become their maker.