The Harvest Comes Later

Drive out of town this time of year and you'll see combines in the fields. Dust in the air. Trucks lined up at the grain elevator.

Those farmers put that seed in the ground back in the spring. Then for months it looked like nothing. Just dirt. They didn't get to see much of anything until the crop finally came up.

I'm no farmer. I can barely keep a houseplant alive. But I've been thinking about that wait.

What you can't see

A seed goes in the ground and disappears. That's how it works. If you dug it up every few days to check on it, you'd kill it.

Most of the good things God asks us to do work the same way. You pray for your kid and nothing changes. You show up for a friend who doesn't say thanks. You keep being honest at a job where cutting corners would be easier. And for a long time it looks like brown dirt.

Paul knew how that feels. He wrote this to a church that was tired:

"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." — Galatians 6:9

He didn't say "if things go well." He said "if we do not give up." The harvest was never the part that depended on us. Showing up was.

God sets the season

Farmers can't rush a harvest. They plant, they water, they pull weeds, and then they wait on rain and sun they don't control.

Paul said it plainly to another church: "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow" (1 Corinthians 3:6).

That takes a lot of pressure off. I'm not in charge of the growing. I'm in charge of the planting. And God isn't late. He works on a calendar I can't see.

Sowing goes both ways

There's a harder line right before verse 9. "A man reaps what he sows." That's true about good seed. It's true about bad seed too.

The short temper. The small lie. The habit I keep telling myself doesn't matter. Those get planted too, and they come up later.

But grace changes the ground. God can pull weeds we planted ourselves. And he can grow good things in places we thought were ruined. I've seen it in my own life more than once.

Fall is a good time to look around

Look at what's coming up in your life right now. Some of it you planted years ago and forgot about. A friendship. A kid who's turning out kind. A faith that held when things got hard.

Thank God for it. Then go plant something again.

Try this this week: Pick one thing you've been tempted to quit. A prayer, a person, a habit. Write it down. Then keep at it for seven more days and don't check the dirt.

"Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy." — Psalm 126:5

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