HARVEST TIME

 

Thursday, September 22, 2022

 

HARVEST TIME

 

Gen 8:20-22

20 And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

21 And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. 22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

 

          Today is the first day of Autumn and here in the south it still feels like summer with temperatures stubbornly rising to the nineties. Yet there is a crispness to the morning and a mist upon the fields. Autumn’s golden hues will reach south although she may be late.

 

          The word harvest is found in the Authorized Version sixty-one times. It is first used when God made a promise to Noah that the rotating seasons of seedtime and harvest, heat and cold, would continue as long as the earth remained. The LAST time it is used in the gospels is in John 4:35 when Jesus referred to the approaching Samaritans as ripe for plucking. The word is not used again until Revelation 14:15 when the earth is reaped by an angel. This will be a fearful reaping for mankind is the harvest. The period between John 4 and Revelation 14 is labor.

 

          I once found myself in a warm country restaurant where several farmers were having breakfast and drinking coffee. Clad in overalls, plaid-lined denim jackets and greasy seed company ball caps, these men were working. This was their work because their work now was waiting. Waiting for the harvest. Praying, in their own way, for a bumper crop. These were not competitors but partners in a rhythm of renewal. Their farms may have varied in size and value, but their purpose was the same. They would work for harvest time.

 

          Harvest time is both a time of refreshing and a time for preparation. Winter is coming. It is that time that Jesus referred to in John 9:4 “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.”

 

Dear Lord, bless your churches with a great harvest. AMEN