Unless a Grain of Wheat …
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.”
—Melannie Svoboda
Gracious Goodness: Living Each Day in the Gifts of the Spirit
It is a fact that a grain of wheat must fall to the ground and die before it can grow and produce much more wheat. If it never dies, it will never be more than a single seed (John 12:24). This is the passage the devotional above is reflecting upon. It’s a powerful truth that God’s refining work in us is necessary to produce the greatest harvest, yet the process of refining is a painful one. Submission is the key here for believers; recognition that God is at work and the work will yield the best result possible and embracing the process, for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure (Phil. 2:13). —DH
—David Hoskins, Founder & Care Guide, Sanctuary Clinics