Click for Audio: The Palm of Plenty

 “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say; ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour” (John 12:27).

In this scene, as depicted in the Gospel of John, Jesus is about to enter Jerusalem and become the world’s most famous martyr. According to the Gospel accounts, he knew what lay ahead. Despite the warnings of his closest advisors, and despite his own uneasiness about this monumental decision, he decided to press forward.

It is at this moment that John places in his text an agricultural metaphor bearing a significant message to anyone desiring major change. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” In other words, if you want to experience greater good in your life, you must be willing to let go of that aspect of yourself that created your current experience.

There is a basic metaphysical concept that says, if you are at point A in your life and you want to be at point B, then you must begin to examine what anchors you to point A. If you want change then you yourself must be willing to undergo a change, to “die” to the person that built your current surroundings and give birth to a person that can sustain the conditions of life you desire.

Charles Fillmore, cofounder of Unity, says that palm trees represent “realizations in the physical of unlimited resource of strength”. The tree taps a life-sustaining source of water and nutrition that is often unseen by the casual observer. The palm branch spread on the road before Jesus represents a conscious separation between material appearances of lack and the truth of God as our ever-present resource. We give birth to our prospering consciousness first through a perceptual shift—from appearances to faith in God as our unfailing Source—and the conditions we desire begin to follow.

While exercising our faith in God will sometimes trouble the soul, we’re actually experiencing the release of something familiar and focusing our trust in something unseen. The message here is to press forward with the Truth you know.