Wrecking But Loving

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Wrecking But Loving

John 12:24

John 12:24 (NASB)

24 “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

A seasoned saint was asked by a despairing Christian, “Doesn’t the world look to you like a wreck?” “Yes,” was the cheerful and confident reply, “like the wreck of a bursting seed.” Any of us who have watched the first sprouting’s of an oak tree from the heart of a decaying acorn will understand what this means. Before the acorn can bring forth the oak it must become a wreck. No plant ever came from any but a wrecked seed.  

Our Lord uses this fact to teach us the meaning of His processes with us, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).

The explanation of the apparent wreckage of the world at large or of our own personal lives in particular is here set forth. Looked at in this light, we can understand how it is that the Lord can be good yet permit the existence of sorrow and wrong in the world He has created and in the lives of the human beings He loves.

It is God’s very goodness that compels Him to permit sorrow and wrong. He knows that only through such apparent wreckage can His glorious purposes for us be brought to pass. And we whose hearts also long for that fruition, will, if we understand His ways, be able to praise Him for all His goodness even when things seem hardest and most mysterious.