Ground Like Wheat

When I was 16, my friend Ray and I got on a bus, headed out for Wichita, Texas to look for a wheat harvesting crew to join.  Despite the fact that I did not know where they might be once we got there, or if they would still be in town, and never mind I had never operated a combine before, I just knew we were going to find work - and, we did.  God must have smiled at those two foolish boys.

During that summer, I cut thousands upon thousands of bushels of wheat.  Wheat that came from the Bread Basket of America, destined for the bread baskets of Americans and beyond.  But this bountiful wheatt would not be worth anything to anyone until it was cut down, sifted thoroughly and ground into flour.  To become the life-giving product, which is sought out by millions, wheat must be broken and battered and ground down into a shadow of it's former golden glory that waved in the fields across this country.

As a Christian, a child of God, have you wondered why God has allowed you to suffer periods when you were cut down, winnowed and ground to a powder?  Have you not had occasion to look up at the heavens and cry out, "Why me God?"  How often have you looked around and noticed how cushy some unbelievers and posers and takers have it while you suffer under the weight of a mill stone?

Perhaps it is for the very reason that you are a child of God instead of a son of Satan, wheat instead of chaff, that God allows for the grinding of your soul - a grinding that humbles you into a shadow of your former self so that you can be recreated in the image of His glory.  Perhaps the fire of suffering you feel is but the oven in which God transforms you into bread, which can feed the starving souls around you.  Perhaps, you are not being destroyed butt transformed.

Listen to the words of the apostle Paul: "And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us" (Rom 5:2-5).

Being humbled in life, even being broken and ground down like a fine flour, is not particularly a sign that you are forsaken or found to be unfit for the kingdom.  It may be instead that you are found acceptable needing only to be humbled sufficiently before the King in order to be lifted up to the position God has in mind for you.  God's humbling is not to lay us low but rather to lift us up: "Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time" (1 Pet 5:6).  Jus' Say'n.