Living Grain

“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”— John 12:24

Hesed means.

       Did you ever hear the story of the two bags of grain? It is an old Eastern story and is like one of the parables Jesus was fond of telling. Once upon a time an Eastern prince took a long journey and left with his two friends two sacks of corn to be kept till he returned. After a long time he came back and said, “Where is my corn?” The first friend led him to his cellar, and showed him the bag of corn, all soft and rotten and useless. “Where is my corn?” he asked the second, and his friend led him out to the farm and showed him a great field of waving corn, “That is your corn,” he said. Then the prince told the first friend he could have the useless corn in the cellar and to the second he said, “When you reap the harvest give me back one sack and keep all the rest.” Which friend was wise?

       If we would keep grain we must sow it in the fields. Old grain will die after a while.

       Perhaps you have read stories to the effect that grain found in the wrappings of mummies, three or four or five thousand years old, if planted will live again and grow. I have read such stories, with exact dates, and wondered how they could be told over and over again, for I know that old grain found with mummies thousands of years old does not grow.

       One day I asked a friend who knows all about such things. His name is Dr. Coulter and he teaches Botany and other such subjects to the students of the University of Chicago, and writes about flowers and fruits, and wheat and corn.

       He told me this story. Years ago, when the first mummies were found in Egypt—you know what a mummy is—a wise German professor took some of the seeds of grain found in these tombs and planted them in his garden. Every morning he went out to see if the corn had sprouted and each morning he came back into the house shaking his head and saying, “No, there is no sign of life.” Days went by, and he was quite disappointed and ready to admit that old, old grain, thousands of years old, would not grow again.

       The German professor had two boys, two small boys, and there is nothing too hard or too difficult for two small boys. Seeing their father’s disappointment they set to work to cheer his heart, and to cause the old Egyptian grain to grow. So they found some real fresh wheat and sowed it in the garden where their father had sowed the old grain and pretty soon it sprouted and the green blades came up through the ground and the German professor rubbed his hands and laughed and said, “True, the old grain grows again.” Then he sat down and wrote out the story and it was printed in a German paper.

       Little by little, however, the true story leaked out, for the boys told what they had done to a friend of their father. He was disturbed. Would he keep quiet, or would he tell the professor? He decided to tell and so their father had to write to the same paper and deny his first story, and say that old grain, found in the cases of mummies, thousands of years old, does not grow. But the truth has never caught up with the first lie, and it is still told that grain never loses its life.

       But it does. Grain does die. The only way to keep grain living is to sow it, plant it in the field. That is what Jesus said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

       Remember, then, the story of the prince and the two sacks of corn. What we keep we lose. What we sow we keep. If we wish to be rich we must sow the seed of good deeds, kind words, and loving thoughts.

       Remember, too, we can only get a living harvest from living grain. We must not trust in the past but in the present. We, indeed, reap from the sowing of our parents and the great and the good of the past, but if others are also to reap a golden harvest we ourselves must sow living seed. Kerr

“Let the dead past bury its dead;

Act, act in the living present;

Heart within, and God o’er head.”