Observation: Since the beginning of John's Gospel, Jesus has been talking about "his hour," the culmination of his ministry. Now he says it has finally come. He says that unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and "dies", it can't bear fruit.
Application: We heard a great talk at lunch yesterday from Pastor Terry Wildman about Jesus' call to the religious establishment to "bear fruit". Now as I hear it again, it's sounding like a theme. But bearing fruit in our lives requires change. A grain of wheat has to give up its life in its current form in order to grow a new stalk. The grain doesn't know what that will look like, or whether it will hurt, but only that it has no control over the process, and once it's begun, it can't be reversed. That sounds terrifying to me. But then, most change does at first. Our consolation is that God knew us before we were born, and God knows what we will become.
Prayer: God, help us hand our lives over to you, so that what needs to die may die, and what fruit needs to be born can be born. Amen.
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