Have you ever compared a flower in bloom with the seed that produced it? The flower is tall, colorful, and moving with layers and textures. The seed is a tiny, hard kernel, motionless and plain. When comparing them, it’s hard to believe they are related, much less the same plant. It’s such a marvel! The tiny seed transforms into a luscious flower—the mysterious work of God!
If we protect the seed and keep it exactly as it exists, it will never become a flower. That is the temptation of “the way we’ve always done it.” We want to keep our lives, our churches, our world exactly the way they’ve always been. This impulse to preserve what we cherish, however, often does not lead to life or fruitfulness.
The seed must “die,” that is, break open, transform so completely into a flower that it is no longer recognizable as a seed. The seed relinquishes its current form in order to bear fruit in the world. This dying is an obedience to the mysterious work of God.
Jesus invites us to learn from the seed. We too can let ways of being in the world, ways of thinking, ways of being church die so they break open and are completely transformed by God to bear fruit in the world. Here’s the rub: the fruit the Spirit produces may look nothing like the seed we let die. It is beyond our imagining! It takes trust and courage. Yet the hard and amazing truth is that to bear fruit, we first have to let things die. Jesus calls us to follow his way of life and death—and Life.