Maybe you saw “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” starring Richard Dreyfus. It is a movie about the difficulties a man experiences as he struggles with adapting to the life he had instead of the one he wanted.

Holland dreamed of being a composer but a baby came along and expenses too. So he found a job teaching music but in his spare time he would compose music.

Throughout the story his teaching responsibilities forced him to make choices between the students and his dream symphony.

But in the finale of the movie, after many long years of touching young lives with his gifts, his “opus” was not his composition marked on a sheet of paper but a brilliant symphony composed of the individual lives that he encouraged and nurtured through his teaching.

Is this not what Jesus was getting at? “When a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it surrenders to new life and bears much fruit.”  Friend, bury your life in others, and you will bear much fruit.

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