" The Harvest" Howdy! Welcome once more, and thanks again for checking in and keeping an open mind. Lately I have just been intrigued with walls. We have had some pretty significant ones throughout history and much history and significance associated with them. Some of them have been , hard core brick and mortar structures such as the Berlin wall that separated the city into East and West, post world War II. As a history lover, I've always found that one super interesting as to how allies, quickly came to distrust one another and the wall became an exploitation point to solidify that mistrust . Yea!, there's a lot more to that story ☺️. Then there's the great wall of China. What an architectural feat of ingenuity and commitment to protection and keeping the population base safe. Well!, again a ton of history for something that began in the 7th century BC . It started out as a series of fortifications to protect against enemy attacks and had been subsequently added on through the centuries to where it now expands some thirteen thousand miles.
Some walls are represented by parallels such as longitude and latitudes on a map, and are marked off as degrees and are sometimes referred to as a " No Fly Zone" , or are disputed by nations as their air space or some portion of the sea and ocean that has been declared as outside of international waters or air space. It can be a little bit of a complicated mess, but mostly set up for defense and alot having to do with reaction time in response to some threat. Walls can be one of those mixed blessing things. They can be extremely useful and effective at keeping harm away, but it can also be a sort of mental prison, when they are used to keep healing and good outside of our lives, when it's probably one of the things that we need most. We aren't always good at knowing what is best for us, even though we often think that we do.
So walls can be actual structures or made up and imaginary in nature, but which one is actually stronger? I mean it's fairly simple to look at the great wall of China and see that it has stood the test of time with three millennium shadowing over it's existence. None of us get that sort of time on this side of eternity, so just how strong are those walls that we erect around our hearts, minds and souls? Let's just say that you get seventy years, but if you never actually experience genuine true love in your lifetime, did you even live? It sounds far fetched and maybe a little crazy, but in these dark days, probably more potential there than you could imagine. I don't always enjoy putting blame and responsibility at the feet of fathers, but it often starts there. As dads we get the privilege of setting our kids up for success or failure. Just for a moment step away from what the world or most people think of as success . Dump the education and financial and corner office highlights for just a minute or two. I have met very few parents who haven't wished the best for their kids and their futures. It really comes down to how we define success.
If we measure success in terms of raising a quality human being to adulthood, then we have done well. So , then we switch the argument to what is and what does quality look like? Do we raise our kids with a sense of fair play, and that its not always about winning and winning at any cost. Have we instilled in them the ability to be graceful when things don't always turn out in their favor and how to genuinely celebrate other people's accomplishments, without resentment and distain? Have we taught them the advantages of doing the right things, even when Noone is watching, even when it's hard, or even when it cost them something personally, but still doing it just simply because it's the right thing to do? Have we taught our kids to stand and speak up for the weak and marginalized? Have we taught our kids, despite our best efforts, that sometimes life just isn't fair? Have we taught our young men and young women to see others as valuable human beings, even if they are less fortunate than themselves, and to see value even if they are standing on a corner with a cardboard sign in their hands? Maybe to , more importantly to remember that they are made in the image of God, just like they are themselves. We need to make good use of walls, both the physical ones and the ones that come in the form of boundaries to protect our kids and families. I believe that we protect and invest in the things that are important to us, be it our homes , marriages, or even rights promised to us by the constitution ☺️. Why all of the hard work? Well!, I think that its often about some kind of "ROI", return on our investment, even if we don't state it or frame it in those terms. Maybe we could have a dispute over what is actually hard work or not. We want to be proud parents, just as our kids want to be proud of us, and if you doubt that, just listen to kids who never talk about or refer to their parents at all or very little. They aren't proud of them for some reason and it may very well be how they speak to or treat them and not so much about what they do for a living. If you are a parent, then you know that its one of the most difficult endeavors of life. Even if you throw the financial part of feeding and clothing out of the window, it's about the nights of being up all night because they are sick. The chauffeuring, the fighting with to get projects and homework done. The caos of getting them to understand responsibilities through doing chores and contributing to the family to prepare them for next steps in life. These things could become very small in comparison to the emotional roller coaster of picking and choosing good friends. The emotional turnstile of middle school and just trying to fit in , while retaining their individuality. Just so much to navigate through the teen years often accompanied with a healthy dose of rebellion as they try and discover their place in the world. If that's not hard work, then I don't know what is ☺️☺️. All of that and I still believe that children are a blessing from the Lord.
So what's it all leading up to?. It's about the harvest. The harvest doesn't occur without alot of hard work going into the process. The Bible says that we reap or harvest, what we sow or invest in . It's a principle that is old, wise and trustworthy. Perhaps the picture of a farmer comes to mind and sweat dripping from his brow. Many long hours of caring and cultivating some tender plant. He's planted, watered and fertilized to increase the odds of a good and bountiful harvest, and yet it's still requires God's blessings on all of his hard work. The farmer can't make the sun shine, the rain fall or the winds to be favorable. Only God can do that and without that, it's often for not. There is a guaranteed return on investment and it's when we sow gossip, back biting and deception, envy, discontentment and general misery. We are guaranteed to harvest drama beyond our telling . It's like the gift that just keeps on giving. Every time you blink, there is a new wrinkle to contend with ☺️☺️. We wonder what happened and how did we get here? Just retrace those steps and you will usually track it down to something self inflicted ☺️ . It's the same principle at work, we are harvesting what we planted.
If we all have a part to play and there are things that only God can accomplish, why on earth are we so resistant to that? Is it that we get cocky or impatient? Back to the farmer, he waits for the conditions to come together and then he is prepared for the harvest. We can take every precaution known to an obstetrician , and it's still no guarantee of a healthy baby. We can eat properly, sleep properly, exercise and all of the other attributes of clean living and still die an early death at thirty-six. Earlier I made a reference to walls and yes the invisible ones that we put up and install around not just our hearts and minds, but our souls as well. It's the wall labeled independent contractor and I got this☺️☺️. It's the one that says I got this and I see no need for interference from some deity. It would just be totally awesome if life just got better and better along the way without any pitfalls or setbacks, but if you have been here for more than a moment, then you know that's not how life goes, and yes even for the one's who know God. The principle of the harvest is real and I often wonder why we disregard or neglect the proper care and feeding of our souls. Its not a multiple choice question with indecisiveness as an option. No dicision, is still a dicision !
Why is it that almost every other area of our lives, we exercise some level of attentiveness.? We pay close attention to our careers, retirement accounts , our health and we spend enough money on our pets to rival the defense budget ☺️☺️. Perhaps we don't get or see that we are living in a broken and decaying world. Maybe we think this is as good as it gets , or that we get to produce a defense at the gates of heaven as to why we deserve entry. Our defense or acquittal has been determined before the trip to the pearly gates, and will be determined by whether or not our name appears in the Lamb's book of life or not. If we plant nothing eternal, then there is no hope for harvesting anything eternal. It's not a terrible hard concept to follow . Sometimes for some reason that we don't understand, the harvest is minimal or less than expected, and at other times the opposite is true and the harvest is above expectations, and exceedingly bountiful. The point is that we invested some amount of effort and that we received something for those efforts. We don't always produce rock star kids, regardless of how much we invest into them and sometimes from hindsight we see that we invested the wrong kind of seed and that we got some off shoot of what we had planted years earlier , when we taught that winning was everything.
The same forces are at play when we have a marriage that has been on autopilot for years, which quickly turns in decades, and then waking up one morning not knowing or recognizing the person that You are sleeping with. The person who goes out to pick up milk and cigarettes and just never returns. When we don't nurture and care for things and feed them properly, they usually produce some kind of death, or something that is rotten and doesn't smell to good. It could be that it looks great on the outside and just hollow on the inside and not able to sustain the least amount of pressure, because it has been lacking in love. There are countless stories of people who are living on the streets and have family capable, but unwilling to take them in for various reasons. They didn't see the benefits of investing into family, kids , extended family or any relationship that would have said that they cared about anyone other than self. I'm not saying that is the story of the majority of homeless people, but I would say that it's a great place to maybe make some eternal investments.
I'm often blown away when someone places a new twist or perspective on some well known acknowledgement . Most, not all are familiar with if we aren't faithful with the small things in life, that we won't be faithful with larger things in life. Probably ninety plus percent of us would immediately associate that with some kind of monetary amount. If we aren't good with small amounts of money, then it's usually true of larger amounts as well. What if the larger things that we were to be trusted with are actually people. We know or at least I hope that we know that people are more valuable than material possessions, even though we don't always act and behave as if that is true. Only our souls have eternal significance. It's not our bank accounts or these old bodies that move on to the eternal realm. Those two things only matter with what we do with them now and if we used them wisely and in the use and service to God and others. Those are the only seeds that will produce an eternal harvest. Things that are done selflessly for others.
Let's just for a second get into the weird and not always easy areas to understand. God places protections around His own and they serve as walls. Sometimes they are physical in nature, but most often they are spiritual in nature. God protects the harvesters as they do the work of sowing and harvesting. The job description is simple, it's about being and sharing and adding souls to the kingdom. As I said earlier, we all have a role to play, or to mess with your mind just a little bit more. They have a calling that God set up specifically for each harvester and it's not interchangeable, as in the next person up, or as someone else can fill the role , that God * meticulously set aside just for them to do. Bend your mind around the fact that God had planned this for you, before there was a you.
All areas of life , the principle remains true, we reap what we sow. It's true of our health, just about every relationship that you have in your life, and it's true eternally as well. Don't get it twisted by looking around thinking that wicked people are prospering, without consequences, we just don't always get to see all aspects of their story, but the principle holds true for them as well. As we close out today, be more mindful of sowing , planting and investing in the eternal and not being so tied to the here and now. Here and now is a very short time line, and the brevity of it all becomes just a little bit clearer with each passing day. In all of your endeavors, invest wisely and be ever mindful of the things that carry eternal significance .
