Lent 5B
March 25, 2012

Going Back to Seed Potential
by Tom Cox

Most research tells us that the key trait of happy people is that they have
a purpose. In short they “invest” their lives in something. At a time
of high unemployment, this can seem a bit of a tall order. However,
if you ask a “happy” person, how they are in life, bleak economic
situations don’t seem to come into it. They will inevitably tell you
enthusiastically of something they’re at or doing. It could be work,
or maybe investing time and talent in a child at a crucial stage of
their development. All in all, as they will explain, it really seems
to give them life. Even if it seems (in economic terms at least) to be
giving more than receiving.

It does seem that we are genetically coded to “flourish under fire” to
quote the title of a recent book by popular psychologist Maureen
Gaffney. She contends that we are meant to have well-being, meaning
and purpose in our lives.

Agreed, but how do we achieve this. Basically by dying to self and
living for others. Something needs to switch this on.  Jesus speaks of
a grain of wheat dying. What happens there? Inside every seed is an
embryo that has a root going into the ground and a shoot going up. It
also has an “on” and “off” switch. The time and soil temperature must be
right before the “on” switch allows oxygen in water to come into the
seed. When it takes in water, it expands, breaking the seed coat and
producing sugar and proteins and ultimately fruit.

Something like that needs to happen to us. Maybe the outside
conditions are not ideal in our country, in our community, in our
life.  Perhaps we are a dried up shrivelled seed - but we are destined
to grow and flourish.  We approach Holy Week. Next Sunday may see your
community gather in a different space outside the Church to mark His
entrance into Jerusalem. Perhaps you will bring your own green branch.
As you cut it off this week from the life giving shrub it belongs to-
consider this; what way are we cut off from the life giving power of
God. In Jesus Christ we have someone worth living for and great enough
to die for.

Or are we like the amateur gardener, who bought the seed packs. They
now have beautiful pictures of flowers…on those same seed packs. The
seed which was never immersed in soil, lie shrivelled and dormant within
it’s paper coffin. It would be terrible if our true epitaph at the end
of life were to be a similar “returned unopened.”

(Comments to Tom at tomasmacconchoille@googlemail.com )