It’s in the Seed

“I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies,
it remains only a single seed.”

(John 12:24)

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”[i]
(Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Betty Elliot was visiting at the home of one of her friends, Wendell Collins, a director of Teen Teams for Youth for Christ. Trying to comfort her, Wendell asked how she was coping with the death of her husband.

“Wendell,” said Betty, “Jim didn’t die in the jungle.”

“I know, Betty,” he said. “I know his life is hid with Christ in God, and you’ll see him in heaven. But he really did die in the jungle.”

“No, he didn’t.”

Wendell thought, The grief has really gotten to her. She’s beginning to retreat from reality. “Betty,” he said, “you have to face it: Jim is really dead. He really did die in that jungle.”

“No,” she said.” “Jim didn’t die in the jungle. He died when he was a kid in high school. He died when he knelt beside his bed and prayed. He died when he wrote in his journal, ‘Gold must be spent. Blood is of no value unless it flows across the altar. Am I expendable? God take me. Spend me any place you need me.’ That’s when my husband died.”[ii]

“When the will of God crosses the will of man, somebody has to die.”[iii]
(Elisabeth Elliot)

Ponderings...

Many of us pray prayers like, “God, use me,” “I’ll live for you,” and so on. As sincere and well-intended as these prayers are often offered, what might be some ramifications of adding the five small words “any place you need me?”

“God, use me… any place you need me.”
“I’ll live for you.. in every area of my life.”
"God, spend me any place you need me.”

Prayer:

“For the sinful self is not my real self, it is not the self You have wanted for me, only the self that I have wanted for myself. And I no longer want this false self. But now, Father, I come to You in your own Son’s self . . . and it is He Who presents me to You.”[iv] (Thomas Merton)



Meditate on the following statements.

Death is the opening of a more subtle life.
In the flower, it sets free the perfume;
in the chrysalis, the butterfly;
in man the soul.

Some die without having really lived,
while others continue to live,
in spite of the fact that they have died.

“The end of birth is death; the end of death is birth.”
Arnold

“Why fear death?
It is the most beautiful adventure in life.”
Frohman



“He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.”
Montaigne



“Only the hands that give away the flowers of their plucking retain the fragrance thereof.”Chinese Proverb

[i] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 89.
[ii] Ibid., Winkie Pratney, 191-192.
[iii] Addison Leitch, quoted in Passion and Purity, Elizabeth Elliot, (Revell, 1984), 72.
[iv] Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 1958), 75.