HARVEST

SCRIPTURE: Exodus 23:16

Celebrate the Feast of Harvest with the firstfruits of the crops you sow in your field. Celebrate the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in your crops from the field.

HARVEST

I don’t know about the area you live in, but in my little corner of the world tractors, trucks and combines are traveling back and forth across the fields to harvest the crops. It has been a rough year with no rain on one field and barely enough rain on another. Yields range from next to nothing to a normal crop. Those involved in agriculture are putting in long days to harvest what crops there are. They are missing their children’s ball games and, if the weather map says rain, they often have Sunday morning worship as they harvest, plow or unload the truck.

But there would be no harvest if there had not been work.

Farmers and ranchers across this great land work hard. They work hard to feed themselves. Their neighbors. You. They go to work before daylight and return home after dark. They check on a cow in the middle of the night just to make sure the delivery is going okay. They leave the dinner table because the truck showed up early for a load of hogs. They order seed and fertilizer in November that will not be used until the ground is ready to plant in the spring. They plant, tend, nurture and trust that what they produce (Corn, soybeans, wheat, potatoes, cattle, hogs, pumpkins, coffee, carrots, lettuce, chickens and another gazillion products.) will grow and harvest will begin again.

Yes, those involved in agriculture work hard to feed themselves, their neighbors and you. They work hard to provide for your physical body.

SCRIPTURE: John 4:31-36

Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”

But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”

“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.”

HARVEST

Do you consider yourself a sower? Ever thought about yourself as a crop? Got news for you: YOU ARE BOTH!

AND NOW

Think about that last sentence. How do you sow the Word of God so others can be saved? Are you ready to be harvested into eternal life?

LET US PRAY

Today, please talk with the Lord. Ask Him to guide you as you sow His Word. And, if you are not spiritually ready to be harvested, talk to Him about that also.