I was reading today's devotional from InTouch online, with Charles Stanley. I was struck by the verse...John 12:24..."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."
I have often noticed that so many of the simple, yet profound spiritual lessons throughout the Bible have one basic concept in common...much of God's ways are opposites! This is no earth shattering realization. Many of you probably have already noticed this trend, too, when reading and absorbing many of the spiritual lessons God has laid out for us. I have been wanting to write down a list of examples of the many ideas in the Bible where God's thinking on things is clearly a pattern of opposites from what you'd expect. But, today's devotional sparked me to finally write a blog entry about this phenomenon. At least, to me, it is very interesting!
You'd think that if a grain of wheat falls to the ground, that it would simply wither away and die, right? From a logical perspective, that's what I would think. But, apparently, today's Bible verse states the exact opposite...that a grain of wheat that falls to the ground bears much fruit! How is that possible? The devotional points out that this lesson deals with being broken by God. In other words, if we are to stand alone, upright, as a grain of wheat, we are actually by ourselves and not going to produce anything. But, it is in our brokenness, like a grain of wheat that is broken and falls to the ground, that God can actually produce much fruit. Think about that concept for a few minutes...a grain of wheat that is broken on the ground can produce a rich crop! I guess the concept behind that is the fact that its seeds would then scatter along the ground, which in turn produces more seeds or grains of wheat to grow in the future. That seems like such opposite thinking from what my mind could think of in that situation. But, alas, God is MUCH smarter and wiser than me! And His ways are definitely higher than my ways!
Another quick example that I am thinking of off the top of my head is the parable in the Bible (Luke 19:11-26) about the servants who were each given an equal share of money (10 minas) by their master before he went away. One servant invested his money and doubled the original share (another 10 minas)! You can bet this master was happy with how this servant managed his share of the money! His master was so happy, in fact, that he put him in charge of ten cities! Another servant told the master that he had earned another 5 minas in interest! So, he was put in charge of five cities. But, the most interesting concept in this parable was the lesson about the third servant who simply put his share of the money away in a cloth for safe-keeping. When I first read this story years ago, I thought, that's good. I'd probably do the same. At least he's not spending it! But, the parable goes on to say that the master was VERY angry with this servant and what he had done with his share of the money. Huh? Why would he be angry at all? It was at this point I was already confused! The parable then explains that the servant did not attempt to increase or multiply his share. Instead, he simply did nothing, produced nothing, and basically wasted a chance to multiply the resources he had been given by his master. Because of this, the master gave this man's 10 minas over to the first servant who already had 10 minas and had earned 10 more in interest! To me, this seemed almost like another lesson about opposite thinking. I would never have originally thought that the third servant would actually be in the most trouble with his master simply by putting his money away for safe-keeping. That's my logical thinking at work. But, God says the opposite! It's not enough to just keep the resources He gives us! We need to make an effort to multiply the resources and gain interest on them by putting them to good use. Hmmm...another story about opposite thinking.
There are so many other concepts in the Bible that seem to demonstrate opposites to me. I will continue to post more about this, but I don't want to take up too much space in one blog post. Otherwise, you may not want to read through it all...LOL!
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