The Harvest

The air is alive with rattles, roaring engines, and "action" as much farm equipment is pressed into action. Tractors, choppers, grain wagons, hay rakes, dump trucks, hay trailers, balers, and combines are coaxed to work, again. The choking dust clouds rise as the ground is worked and the crops are harvested -- as machines and their masters follow well-worn farm paths to a multitude of tasks and destinations. Weary men, with one eye on the clouds and the other on the fertile ground, stagger on, exhausted, enduring workdays from before dawn to well after dusk, pressing constantly toward the goal: quotas fulfilled, silos filled, and "enough". Some are more optimistic -- plenty.

Harvest time has come on this farm. And it is when the farm begins harvesting that I cannot help but ponder deeply certain passages concerning a very different harvest.

Filled ? Enough ?


Plenty !

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Luke 3:16-18

John answered them all, saying, "I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people.

Luke 10:1-3

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. And he said to them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves.”

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John 12:23-25

And Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

2 Corinthians 9:9-11

As it is written,

"He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor;
his righteousness endures forever."

He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.