The harvest is not late
“And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”Galatians 6:9
Reflection
There is a specific weariness that hits those who do right: the weariness of doing good with no visible result. The mother who has prayed for years for the distant child. The husband who keeps loving a cold marriage. The faithful servant in the ministry that does not grow. The honest person who watches the cunning prosper. At some point the question rises in the throat: "is any of this working?". Paul knew this weariness — and answered with a law as firm as gravity: the law of sowing. "In due season we shall REAP."
Agriculture teaches what anxiety forgets: between sowing and reaping there is a whole season of apparent nothing. The farmer who sowed in the morning does not return in the afternoon digging to check the seed — he trusts the invisible process. Beneath the ground, in the dark, with no applause, the seed is working. So are the prayers of parents, the examples given in silence, the integrity kept at the office, the seeds cast in conversations that seemed useless: none of it died. It is sprouting out of your sight. "In due season" — not in yours, in God’s — the earth delivers what it received.
The same law has its solemn side: "whatever a man sows, that he will also reap" — whoever sows to the flesh, of the flesh reaps corruption. Each choice of today is the seed of some tomorrow: the words at home, the secret habits, the minutes invested or wasted. No one reaps what they did not sow, and no one sows without reaping. That frightens and comforts at the same time: it frightens whoever has been sowing carelessness; it comforts whoever has been sowing well and not yet seen a sprout. And notice the only condition of the promise: "if we do not LOSE HEART". The harvest is not for whoever sows perfectly; it is for whoever does not give up. The enemy knows he cannot annul the law of sowing — so he works to make you abandon the field just before the sprout. How many gave up on the eve? Keep going: one more prayer for the child, one more gesture of love in the cold marriage, one more Sunday serving, one more week of integrity.
Prayer
Lord of the harvest, renew my strength in the middle of the invisible season. Remind me that no seed cast in You dies — not the old prayers, not the good no one saw. I choose not to lose heart: I will keep sowing until the day the field turns golden. Amen.
Put it into practice
Identify the "seed" you are tired of watering (a prayer, a relationship, a service) — and water it once more today, deliberately, as an act of faith in the harvest.
To reflect on
In what area are you one step from giving up — and how tragic would it be if the harvest were scheduled for just after that step?
Bible text: King James Version (public domain).