"Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the soil, it abides alone,” said Jesus. 'Well, of course!’ might have been the response in that day or in any day when one knows anything at all about agriculture.

And unless the bulb is planted in the Autumn there’ll be no daffodils or tulips, come Spring. And so too for the acorn, the chestnut, the sperma of any living and reproducing species.

But we don’t like the idea of dying, or even of self-sacrifice, because it will hurt; there will be loss and grief and emotion when it comes to our ‘being planted.’'

‘They’ find grain from time-to-time in ancient burial plots and places, like the pyramids. And scientists have stopped being amazed - but they were at first - when the seeds, when planted, sprouted and produced after their kind.

There is so much power and potential in every seed.

But it has to be planted. It has to ‘die.’ It has to go out of sight for awhile - before ever there can be the gift, the root, trunk, branch and bud of promise.

We could take the seed and cover it with gold, and it would be precious in more ways than one. But it would ‘abide alone.’ We'd have a one-off, for as long as we kept and preserved and even cherished it. But think of what would happen if, though it remained frail (though really not at all, though one could take and squash it with fingers and fist) -  but it was planted, decaying, dying - yet still with life within? - Well, we know what happens when we choose to do that.

Likely, every good gift in the world has come through the sacrifice of someone and something. People have not kept it to themselves. They have planted and watered and nurtured 'a seed' - and mostly in some instances done nothing more; then, waited and watched with patience, hope and love.

When our loved ones die, said St. Paul in a wonderful analogy in I Corinthians, they are being ‘planted’ like any seed. And what you plant is not quite what you will reap. The same in essence but different in form. And it's not the end of the Story.

My Dad, a market-gardener, encouraged me one day to taste the seeds in his hands of the radishes he was planting, with this simple little self-driven sower. In the seeds and in their taste was the hint - and even the ‘kick’ of the radishes that would be.

We ‘plant’ a cocoon-worm and get a butterfly. An acorn - and lo an oak tree. A gnarly bulb - and soon a gorgeous hyacinth.

We don’t know, writes St. Paul, what our ‘next-stage’ bodies will be like, but he hints that they will be wonderful. St. John (I John 3:1-3) hints that they will be like our Lord Jesus’ glorious resurrections body - when we (for we shall) see Him as He is.

What we are given, though so precious, must not be hoarded. For the development and fruit of every quality, every gift, every virtue comes only after there is a death - a wee death or a wealth of dying. And usually it will hurt us in some way as we do so.

We will resist as even did Jesus, with sweat and blood and ‘make it go away if possible,' prayers. But if we persist, if we endure, if we work, if we sacrifice - if we allow ourselves and what we hold as dear in our hand to die - then the wonder of what can be still - and more, in the life, potential, grandeur and wonder of God’s ways, will be discovered by us and others - to God’s glory and everyone’s (and nature’s too) great good.