When the season started last spring, my one desire was to grow something and to grow personally. As you can see, the leaves on this tomato plant are dying...but there is still fruit...look closely and you see the red tomatoes! So even in death their is life. Actually, that's just the way Jesus planned it...
Even in our death He is bringing new life. At times I really doubt this, because I don't like death to myself or to my own interests and desires. In C.S. Lewis's book, "The problem with Pain," Lewis discusses that "love may cause pain to its object, but only on the supposition that that object needs alteration to become fully lovable." Not that I think Christ will love me any more after I go through trials, change, and other forms of pain. Lewis explains this concept using the metaphor of an artist and his masterpiece. "We are in very truth, a Divine work of art something that God is making and therefore somthing with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character." God being who He is cannot fully love us and leave us the way we are for that would be less love, not more love. And "it is not that we loved God but that He loved us" (1 John 4:10). 
