Today’s Sabbath School will involve the children also, and will take the form of a Christingle Service, with readings, and musical items from the children and others. The Lesson study will be a review from the desk, there will not be discussion groups this week.

The theme of the dying seed ties in with certain aspects of our earlier discussions of meekness and patience. These lines from C. S. Lewis form an appropriate backdrop for our discussion of the dying seed:

The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says “Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked – the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.” (Mere Christianity IV.8.4)