Waiting for the harvest
This week is on Mark 4:26-29:
Parables like this made perfect sense to the people of Jesus' time. If they weren't all farmers, they were at least a generation or two removed from being farmers. People knew where their food came from, and so they understood intuitively how nature worked. Nature and the kingdom of God were created by the same artist, so they have some similarities in how they work.
Jesus is talking about the point at which he will harvest the world, but it also applies to our faith in things he promises. As any farmer would tell you, grain plants don't look much like the grain they feed their cattle. Even the seed stalks don't look exactly like the grain. The farmer knows nature, though, so he understands the odd stages the seed must go through in order to produce grain for his livestock.
If someone told us we had to throw the grain on the ground to get more grain, we'd probably call him an idiot. If you drop your hat, do you pick up two hats? No, your hat just gets dirty. And no, leaving it there for a couple weeks isn't going to help. It'll just rot, and then not only will you not have a hat, but you'll somehow have to go find money to get another hat. Idiot!
But say we did that, and the grain sprouted. What would we think? We'd be even more convinced of the guy's idiocy. We just gave up our grain, and now we have a bunch of weedy looking grass growing instead. How are we going to find our grain in all of that grass? Kill the grass and cut your losses! And kill the idiot that duped you into throwing the grain on the ground too, while you're at it. Where do they find these people?
But suppose we decided to have faith, and could be convinced that the grass that obviously had nothing to do with our grain would somehow magically have grain stuck to the end of it in a couple months. What would happen when it bloomed? Obviously the guy misunderstood what we asked him for. We didn't ask for flowers, we asked for grain! Duh! There are ugly flowers all over the stupid weeds, right exactly where the grain was supposed to be. How is that supposed to help? If anything, that makes it worse! Where is the grain going to go now?! What a charlatan! At this point, we would probably be calling our lawyer to see if we can find a way to get back at least some of the money we invested in the grain.
But suppose we decided to wait on the lawyers, and the stalks set seed. It doesn't look like our grain. It's too small and it's the wrong color. And if you pick some and try to make bread out of it, it just kind of crumbles and mushes instead of grinding into flour. Obviously this guy was thinking of a completely different kind of grain, because clearly this did not produce fruit of the same quality we were duped into throwing on the ground. So far, this guy has been wrong every single time we've relied on his advice. Fire him!
Still, if we wait until it's actually time to harvest, we'll find that we get way more grain than we started with. None of it makes any sense until you see it. But when God tells us that we have to give something up, or that something good is on its way, we're like the idiots that planted the grain and are convinced they got conned by a prankster. We think maybe God is lying to us, or maybe he can't hear us, or he can't understand us, or he's forgotten about us, or whatever. But all that time, the gift he has for us is growing and reaching maturity.
Be patient and slow to judge when it comes to God's promises for your life. Things sometimes take time to reach a point where you'll recognize them for what they are. If you quit too soon, or you mistake the middle-stages for the end, you'll miss out on the harvest and all of the goodness that goes with it.
He also said, "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come."
Parables like this made perfect sense to the people of Jesus' time. If they weren't all farmers, they were at least a generation or two removed from being farmers. People knew where their food came from, and so they understood intuitively how nature worked. Nature and the kingdom of God were created by the same artist, so they have some similarities in how they work.
Jesus is talking about the point at which he will harvest the world, but it also applies to our faith in things he promises. As any farmer would tell you, grain plants don't look much like the grain they feed their cattle. Even the seed stalks don't look exactly like the grain. The farmer knows nature, though, so he understands the odd stages the seed must go through in order to produce grain for his livestock.
If someone told us we had to throw the grain on the ground to get more grain, we'd probably call him an idiot. If you drop your hat, do you pick up two hats? No, your hat just gets dirty. And no, leaving it there for a couple weeks isn't going to help. It'll just rot, and then not only will you not have a hat, but you'll somehow have to go find money to get another hat. Idiot!
But say we did that, and the grain sprouted. What would we think? We'd be even more convinced of the guy's idiocy. We just gave up our grain, and now we have a bunch of weedy looking grass growing instead. How are we going to find our grain in all of that grass? Kill the grass and cut your losses! And kill the idiot that duped you into throwing the grain on the ground too, while you're at it. Where do they find these people?
But suppose we decided to have faith, and could be convinced that the grass that obviously had nothing to do with our grain would somehow magically have grain stuck to the end of it in a couple months. What would happen when it bloomed? Obviously the guy misunderstood what we asked him for. We didn't ask for flowers, we asked for grain! Duh! There are ugly flowers all over the stupid weeds, right exactly where the grain was supposed to be. How is that supposed to help? If anything, that makes it worse! Where is the grain going to go now?! What a charlatan! At this point, we would probably be calling our lawyer to see if we can find a way to get back at least some of the money we invested in the grain.
But suppose we decided to wait on the lawyers, and the stalks set seed. It doesn't look like our grain. It's too small and it's the wrong color. And if you pick some and try to make bread out of it, it just kind of crumbles and mushes instead of grinding into flour. Obviously this guy was thinking of a completely different kind of grain, because clearly this did not produce fruit of the same quality we were duped into throwing on the ground. So far, this guy has been wrong every single time we've relied on his advice. Fire him!
Still, if we wait until it's actually time to harvest, we'll find that we get way more grain than we started with. None of it makes any sense until you see it. But when God tells us that we have to give something up, or that something good is on its way, we're like the idiots that planted the grain and are convinced they got conned by a prankster. We think maybe God is lying to us, or maybe he can't hear us, or he can't understand us, or he's forgotten about us, or whatever. But all that time, the gift he has for us is growing and reaching maturity.
Be patient and slow to judge when it comes to God's promises for your life. Things sometimes take time to reach a point where you'll recognize them for what they are. If you quit too soon, or you mistake the middle-stages for the end, you'll miss out on the harvest and all of the goodness that goes with it.
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