Harvest time

“Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow.”

Mark 4:3

Jesus tells the tale of a sower—a farmer who is planting his crop in the most unsophisticated, careless, and indifferent ways you could imagine. The sower is not exactly careful about where his seed falls. He lets it fly, and it lands anywhere from the pavement-hard path to the rocks or to the thorn patch. This sower just flings his seed and then waits to see what will happen. And in three of the four possible cases, what results is not good. What results is total failure. Talk about futility.

The sower sows and some of the seed never sprouts at all, some sprouts but dries up—a victim of a southern Illinois summer that won’t take the hint that it’s no longer welcome, or it gets choked out, or hailed flat, or flooded out, or eaten by a bird or a rat or a deer.  There’s a lot of futility in sowing. So why does he bother to do it? Because sowers sow, that’s why.

It didn’t really matter what kind of results he could expect. He was a sower. He had to sow.  Even if much of his effort would be wasted, he had to sow. Even if there were no immediate rewards, even if he saw no apparent results, but only mounting evidence of failure, he had to sow. He was a sower. It’s what he did. The sower did what he had been given to do. This is, I think, the single best answer to the nagging “why” questions that are created and cultivated by life’s experiences of apparent futility.

Students study, teachers teach, accountants count, programmers program, managers manage and sowers sow. Results are actually almost entirely irrelevant. Even personal satisfaction and individual fulfillment don’t count for much. But a sense of futility, along with the frustration that accompanies it, can certainly hamper the effort, can’t it? Meager results, or long-delayed rewards, can throttle the greatest vocation and choke the life out of the most committed servant. Then, indeed, futility and frustration yield their harvest of empty ears, withered grain, and rotting fruit. Futility threatens us all—especially the futility we face when sowing the seeds of God’s Word.

But, behold, the sower goes out to sow…and behold, the remarkable and stunning results of the seeds that are sown. Oh, to be sure, some of what is sown is lost—in fact even much of it may seem to be lost. The birds get their feast, the sun takes its toll, and thorns snatch their share; but in spite of all that, God still gets his harvest. The sower of God’s Word has done his deed, and the lord of the harvest produces his results. The sower has nothing to do with the yield produced. Fruitfulness is entirely out of his hands—that’s the business of God.

The sower sows; God produces. And what grace God bestows, what a harvest he brings: 30, 60, even 100-fold yields. In spite of all outward signs, regardless the apparent failure, in spite of delayed rewards, everything comes together in God’s time and his seed yields its fruit. By God’s grace, the sower’s efforts are not wasted. By God’s remarkable generosity, the labor is not lost and a harvest is realized. Futility gives way to fruitfulness.

Of course, there’s nothing new about any of this. It’s God’s standard way of operating. It’s the way he delights to work. Out of futility, he brings fruitfulness. Out of defeat, he brings victory. What can be more futile than a three-year ministry that concludes with the execution of the leader and a handful of perpetually-bewildered followers who all bail out in the crisis and run for their lives? What a waste. What more disastrous defeat than to have the chosen Messiah, the one who was going to restore all things to perfect fruitfulness and prosperity, left hanging on a cross ridiculed, scorned, damned and dead. A total waste. Futility at its worst. But, out of futility God brings the ultimate fruitfulness, he brings the first fruits of a new creation and a restored humanity. He brings forgiveness for the failures. He brings grace for the disasters. He brings new life for the dead and a fresh start to the decaying. Out of defeat, God brings the victory of resurrection and the assurance that creation will be remade, that the world will be restored, and that bodies sown in death will spring up out of the dirt and rot of the grave to life immortal. When God is at work, futility always gives way to fruitfulness. God always gets his harvest.

Take heart, people. The God who always gets his harvest is your God. He has sown his seed in you. He will bring it to a rich harvest. You are his crop. You are his fabulous harvest. It is God’s great delight richly to bless the work of his sowers—they do not work in vain. Their effort is not futile—how can it be when God is at work in and through them? What has been sown in you will not be wasted. And, what you, in turn, sow in and through your vocations and your words will not be wasted either. By his grace, God will bring his harvest in his way and in his time, and all that you do according to what he has given you to do will result in the fruit that he has planned—no matter how things may look at present.

So, don’t sweat the apparent results that you see or don’t see. The harvest is not your business, and the rate of yield is not your concern. God will take care of that. Don’t give any credence to the thoughts of futility and frustration that will always manage to creep back into your days. That sense of malaise and hopelessness simply doesn’t belong among God’s people who are busy doing the work God has given them to do. It is God who has sent you to do his work—in your dorm, in your classroom, in your workplace, in your relationships. In those places, you do what you’ve been given to do, and you sow seeds. It is God who sent you to sow, and it is God who will take care of the results.

God will bring the harvest.