In the late fall a huge bulky truck outfit that barely cleared the telephone wires, drove into the yard right past the house and on up to the big red grain shed. Bill and Rickie trotted along behind in the cloud of dust it raised, and read the sign painted on it which said, “Tompkins and Nibler, Wheat Treater.”
They watched the men pour some of the wheat they had recently harvested into a chute on the rig that conveyed it into a cleaning compartment. When the machine was set in motion, it rattled and whirred with the vibration of the motor inside, removing every speck of chaff, dirt, and foreign seed, in the re-cleaning process. Then the grain was dusted with powdered copper carbonate, to resist smut, and emptied out again into burlap sacks. These sacks were tied shut, and piled high in the big grainery to await the coming of spring. This wheat was not to be ground up into flour to make bread, or to be used for food. It was set aside especially to be planted, and so was called seed wheat.
Each one of the little kernels of wheat in those sacks contained a tiny germ of life.
What is life? The dictionary calls it existences. And for wheat it is what makes it grow and reproduce, for continuity of existence on the earth. Wheat does not have a soul as we do.
This spark of life is God-given. Scientists can do many remarkable things. They can fashion a tiny seed with the same chemical composition of starch, protein, minerals, ash and moisture, as wheat, but they cannot make it have life or grow. Life is from God.
Boys and girls are full of life too—and it seems so good to be alive, doesn’t it? But “what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” James 4:1414Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. (James 4:14). Men and women, and even boys and girls die, and doctors cannot make them alive again. It is what comes after death that is most important.
To us God not only gives life here and now, but He has given us a never-dying soul—the very breath of God breathed into Adam’s nostrils, not to be snuffed out when our earthly body dies. Is this not a wonderful possession? Indeed it is, but sad to say many pele are careless of the destiny of their never-dying soul, which is either heaven or hell forever.
One man we read of was so busy with his good crops and new barns and plans for his successful farming, that he disregarded completely this main issue of life. Was he then the clever man he thought himself to be? No, God did not call him wise; He said, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee.” Luke 12:2020But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? (Luke 12:20).
Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your own personal Saviour, dear reader? Do you know where your eternal destiny is? Why not settle it now?
ML 10/17/1954