Dying to Self

Dying to self is one of the hardest things in the world.

It's hard to me both because it's a seemingly endless activity and there is always something else, something more, that I need to look at.

Not that I'm good at it of course - in fact, I'm one of the worst I know.  I'm forever finding reasons to justify my independence, my holding on to this or that.  But that's not an excuse for an activity which, every day, I need to be engaging in more and more.

The pervasiveness of it is astounding, if one really thinks about it.  What does it mean to have one's thoughts, one's opinions, one's mission in life replaced by Christ's?  The implications are farther reaching than I can even contemplate:  if I die to self and live to Christ, what does that do to my language, how I speak to and about others?  What does that do to how I work?  What does that do to how I live?

On a more personal level, what does dying to self do to my own life?  Does that give me the blank slate to continue to pursue my own interests when God may have other needs for my life?  Do I become more important than my children?  Than my wife?  Than my family unit?

Christ used the example of dying to self as a grain of wheat falling to the earth.  This, I know something about having grown wheat and barley for a number of years.  And the reality is that if the grain you plant dies, it produces anywhere from 10-20 grains itself per head.    It's a great example of the gardening world - but when it's brought to my own life, it becomes a much more dicey thing.  The example is there - it's just that I don't feel like I'm a grain wheat.

Which is probably a bit arrogant in and of itself.  The wheat and barley were created to do one thing, which they do quite well.  I, as God's creation, was created to do something else.  The wheat and barley (so far as we know) do their job without complaint; it's only we humans that seem to have an issue with doing other than what we're created to do.

But that requires an abandonment of self, an abandonment of the centrality of one's own life in pursuit of the life God calls us to.  It is sacrifice, even as the grain of wheat sacrifices it's being for the sake of the 20.

The question is, will we be the one that sacrifices into many?  Or will we remain cold and hard in the ground, clutching to our dreams and aspirations of what it means to our own grain of wheat?