How does a grain of wheat feel as it is planted in the soil? To answer that, I imagine interviewing a stalk of wheat, for every stalk was once a grain.
Here is what the stalk might say: I liked being a grain of wheat. I was proud of who I was: Golden. Smooth. Perfectly intact. But then some farmer dug a hole and tossed me into it. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked. But my question was met with silence. Then the dirt came pouring down upon me. I protested, ‘Hey! You’re burying me alive! Stop!’ But no one heard me.
I sat in total darkness. Afraid. Then I felt something. Moisture. At first, I thought, Good. I won’t die of thirst. But soon I began to get soggy; I sensed my golden color was fading. My smooth exterior became wrinkly. My intactness was breached as I was split asunder. I whimpered, ‘I’m dying… This is the end of me.’
Then something amazing happened. Out of my shriveled, broken, dying self, two shoots emerged. One began pushing upward, the other downward–both powered by a force within and beyond me. As my root went down, my shoot went up until it broke through the soil and into the brightness of the sun. I was no longer a grain of wheat–but something better: a stalk of wheat. From me would come forth many, many grains of wheat that would help feed the people of the world.
In closing, the stalk said: “Trust the farmer… Befriend silence and darkness… Embrace transformation… Willingly relinquish your intactness… Believe… For the end is really the beginning.”
This is an excerpt from a book Gracious Goodness: Living Each Day in the Gifts of the Spirit by Melannie Svobodas. If you would like to buy this book please click here.