Harvest Time

As a young person growing up around a farm, I always remembered Fall as being so busy. The farmers would plant the crop in the spring, tend to it from time to time in the summer, but the Fall was where the work would start. One could hear the over sized tractors getting going well before the sun came up, and  the sound would continue into the night.

With Fall begun here, I found myself thinking about Jesus words in John 4:38 “I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor” (ESV). That would be a strange thing to say, as well as to hear in a society that was largely agricultural by nature. There was a time for planting and a time for reaping, it was a rhythm that they lived their lives to. To reap something that you did not plant, to enter into the “payday” but you did not build it. You just entered into it. Strange, but isn’t that what we are doing today?

As I just finished my 2^nd anniversary from the time I was first asked to preach here, I stand, as well as you, in a church that no one person here today founded. We enjoy things that no one person here began, we entered into it. Not saying that there has not been hard work, or that there will not be hard work in the future, Rather, We are building off of a  foundation that has already been laid. The planting has been done, so then let us begin to reap the harvest. What is the harvest of the church, it’s simple, it’s People.

Let us continue to reach out to a community that needs a church that is relevant to it. Let us continue to strive together, to serve better, love more, and embrace others. Let us, together, continue to work in the fields that God has given us, this community. So that we might reap a harvest for the glory of God.

Pastor Tim