1 Corinthians 15

I quote ‘What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.’

‘What you sow does not come to life unless it dies’. I had to think on this, it is right that the seed heads are collected at the end of the growing season for each plant. But also, I realised that this is how our thinking changes and evolves. We find ourselves in uncomfortable situations or circumstances, the worst being that we lose a loved one or they become severely disabled and our life changes overnight. Inside we die a little with them and shrink back from the world for a while. Then just like a Money Tree plant that grows roots from some of its own leaves, we start to push those roots back into the soil, to help get us back onto firm ground where we can start to re-establish ourselves again and to grow independently.

But also, there are the little deaths that we experience throughout life where we find ourselves in confrontation or at odds with people we meet. A situation arises that is beyond our control and we go home mentally wounded and wondering how it went so wrong. We chastise ourselves for lost opportunity, we wither inside for a while as we work through all the ‘might have’s’ and ‘what if’s’ of the situation. It can take days or weeks, but eventually we start to see clearly again, to get a grasp on the situation and to leave it behind us, often not realising the positive changes of strength, of resolution and inner determination that it has brought. It is hard at the time but all lessons add fruit to the soul.