A Call to Perseverance

"And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up."

Sowing and reaping.  Reaping and sowing.  Sunup to sundown.  Day in and day out.  Year after year after year.  

You’re probably tired after just reading those sentences.  

The monotony, the backbreaking labor of planting under a hot sun and reaping under the same, and all of it dependent on God’s provision for...well, everything:  

“Shweww...thank goodness I’m not a farmer,"" you might say.

But here’s the thing.  In truth, we’re all farmers of something.

Like the farmer sowing the land, you are sowing from sunup to sun down, day in and day out.  The question is not whether you’re sowing.  The real question is what your field looks like, what the quality of the seed is, and how willing you are to stay faithful in tilling, and weeding, and watering.  

Maybe the field is your family.  If so, imagine your spouse and children are the soil.  What seeds of life are you sowing into their hearts and minds?  What refreshment are you giving them when the burdens of the world grow heavy, when the well runs dry?  How are you pruning those areas that seem bent on going their own way, ones you know will lead to bad fruit and deep pain?  

Or perhaps the field is your workplace, where the hearts and souls of your colleagues and clients are the soil.  What seeds of integrity and honesty are you sowing with your hard work?  Your honest speech?  Your simple and humble and gracious interactions?  Your unnoticed extra commitment?  Your irreproachable handling of the resources entrusted to you?  

As you answer these questions, rest on these two essential truths:

There is abounding grace for you in all of this.  Grace that will encourage your heart so that areas of current shortcoming do not bring shame but repentance.  Grace to thank God, rather than take credit, for places where the fruit is abundant.  And grace to keep going when you’re tired, whether after years of fruitful labor or years of frustrating harvests.  

He who promised is faithful.  He has begun a good work that He will carry on to completion.  

He says you will reap, if you do not give up.  So press on.  The race is not yet over.  There is more pouring out to do.  More life to sow into the soil of others’ hearts.  More of the Kingdom to seek and to build.