How to die, part 1

"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life" (John 12:24-25).

The thing is, we're all dying.

We started dying the minute we were born. Ironic. We come into this world taking these gasping breaths, clinging to this slender branch, instinctively wanting to live.

But we're born into a dying world, and we've no choice but to be part of it. Even as we grow and live, we know we're doomed. We've been given passage on a sinking ship.

It seems like we spend most of our life denying death, running from it, fortifying ourselves against it, warding it off at all costs. Makes sense. We were created to live, after all. And death is suffering, and suffering is pain.

But in spite of all our efforts, pain is just the way things are. It's not the way things were supposed to be. But there it is. The God who loves us, He had to allow for the possibility of pain if we were to choose to love Him back. And so we made a wreck of things, rent this gaping hole in our existence through which death comes grinning.

Each day we die little deaths that only remind us of what is coming. 

Or maybe the little deaths are the hardest to bear. We don't mind dying in the end (knowing where we are going), but we want the passage there to be smooth and comfortable. We can't stand the losses and the hurts and the goodbyes and the hopes shattered. We long for certainty and safety. 

So we patch and paste and cover and mend, only to end up tearing bigger holes in this flimsy fabric of life.

But what if we die to live? What if we stop denying death and instead step boldly into it? 

We were made to live. But the life that is waiting for us lies through this passage of death. After all, we are all dying already. It's how we die that matters.

How we die determines how we live, not the other way around. 

And so Jesus comes to show us how these little deaths are seeds falling into the earth, smothered in black darkness for a time. But seeds that die in Him, these seeds live again. They grow up strong. Fruit-laden. Full of life. 

It seems absurd to think of a seed clinging to the branch past its time, trying its hardest to keep on living. And what if it does succeed? A seed that never dies must ultimately lead a withered, lonely life. 

We spend a lot of time being afraid of death. Maybe it's time to look death in the face, to determine how we are going to die. Maybe those little deaths--that really aren't so little after all--maybe they are seeds lying in the darkness of a long winter. 

But maybe spring is waiting. And maybe this death is about to sprout up into glorious life. 

He is there in the darkness. And when we are in Him, we never die alone.