Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
God must have a terrific sense of humor. All the while that people created in His image arrogantly deny His existence and the record of His Creation, they are eating bread that constantly proclaims anew the miracle of creation. Each tiny seed with its embryo and endosperm sustains the very life of God's enemies.
Try to imagine yourself a single seed cast into the darkness of the earth. The soil around you is dry and powdery so that your bed becomes your tomb unless some precious rain from heaven falls. Only then can you awaken to fruit-bearing life.
In pre-scientific ages, people marveled at the mysterious miracle in the seed. The Creation story in Genesis tells four times of the divine miracle in every seed, renewed and extended in uncounted trillions of germinations since day three of Creation. Even today, the totality of scientific knowledge is powerless to invent one such life-giving seed.
A favorite theme of Scripture compares seeds to the spoken words of God: "As the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and ... waters the earth, and makes it bring forth and bud, that it may give ... bread to the eater; so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth" (Isa. 55:10, 11). Jesus built on this concept in His parable of the sower: "The seed is the word of God," He said (Luke 8:11).
Without moisture in the soil, changes in the permeability of the seed coat and inner layers cannot take place. And when the embryo germinates, the little plant must have rain if its searching roots are to absorb nutrients for growth. The Bible compares the Holy Spirit's action in the Christian life to showers of rain falling on thirsty plants. In other words, even Jesus' brilliant sermons cannot germinate into new life in human hearts without the gift of the Holy Spirit. Mountains of seed sown in a dust bowl would be wasted.
What can really change the hard hearts of men, women, and young people? Only that gift which is just as miraculous as the life imprisoned inside the seed--heaven's Holy Spirit. Without the Spirit, all the preaching in the world is like sowing seeds on a parking lot.
God wants to pour out His Spirit here at the end of the world as He did at Pentecost when the gospel began to be preached. Why can't it happen now?
--Robert J. Wieland
From: Signs of the Times, November 1989.
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