Spring 2004 | |
RENDEZVOUS | |
A Lesson from a Grain of Wheatby Kerry Upham, Loma, MontanaI am sitting at our dining room table looking out over a yard full of snow. It is 23 degrees below zero and just not a day I want to be out in. My plan is to avoid going out there until absolutely necessary. That's my natural response to the difficult and stressful things in my life. I sometimes think of the winter wheat I seeded last fall. It is out there in those difficult conditions. It's buried. You bury things that are dead, right? But I wasn't burying seed because it was dead. I was burying it with the expectation of greater life in the spring. Though you may question why I would seed in the fall, and how anything could live out there under these conditions, my experience allows me to trust in the principles of growing winter wheat. In order for a grain of winter wheat to produce more wheat, its hard, protective coating must be broken down by moisture to germinate and then be frozen so that it can produce a head of wheat after its own kind in the spring. The seed has to give up its life for the potential that lies within it. Jesus used the example of seeding wheat to illustrate the process that must occur for us to become more than we are: "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." (John 12:24) Lately I have been contemplating those words Jesus spoke before He went to the cross...in connection with my potential wheat crop that lies out under the frozen fields. Who of us has not felt the circumstances of our lives prying away at our protective shells and not tried to reinforce ourselves against the onslaught? But those uncomfortable and seemingly destructive forces are the very ones God uses to bring us to the point of showing Himself in us. Who enjoys living under hard conditions? No one! But it is in trials and tribulations that the relationship, which is "God in me and I in Him," that I am placed in right dependency upon God. A grain of wheat dies to allow what is in it to take root and become thirty or forty times what it was before. I am not very comfortable giving up my desires for the sake of someone else, yet that is what we are called to do as Christians—to become more than we were before. Jesus was the first one to go through this process. His death was in payment for our sin. The power of His resurrection has the potential to lead us into new life, eternal life, if we will identify with Him in His death and trust in His blood that was shed for our sins. "And the witness is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life." I John 5:11-12. We as Christians are the seed wheat among the countless grains of wheat in the world. We have, in our knowledge of Christ, the ability to pass that knowledge on to a world lost in its sin. If we do not pass on this knowledge, we do not fulfill our calling. We are seed. We are not asked to reproduce ourselves but what God has placed within us—Jesus Christ. All that wheat I seeded last fall seems to be in a position of jeopardy, yet in reality it is in position for its best chance of reproducing. The same is true of us. Our circumstances may not seem conducive to life. Yet if Christ lives in us and He is in charge of our lives, we can believe that God is positioning us for our best chance to show His plan to others—to sow the Good News of God's salvation through His Son Jesus. Kerry Upham is a farmer and church leader in the Community Bible Church in Ft. Benton. | |
