A New Devotion - The Harvest to Come

Here's a new devotion that I wrote. It's based on the passage below. You can find a recording of this devotion at the bottom of the page.

Mark 4:1-20 [Contemporary English Version]

The next time Jesus taught beside Lake Galilee, a big crowd gathered. It was so large that he had to sit in a boat out on the lake, while the people stood on the shore. He used stories to teach them many things, and this is part of what he taught:

Now listen! A farmer went out to scatter seed in a field. While the farmer was scattering the seed, some of it fell along the road and was eaten by birds. Other seeds fell on thin, rocky ground and quickly started growing because the soil wasn't very deep. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched and dried up, because they did not have deep roots. Some other seeds fell where thornbushes grew up and choked out the plants. So they did not produce any grain. But a few seeds did fall on good ground where the plants grew and produced 30 or 60 or even 100 times as much as was scattered.

Then Jesus said, “If you have ears, pay attention.”

When Jesus was alone with the twelve apostles and some others, they asked him about these stories. He answered:

I have explained the secret about God's kingdom to you, but for others I can use only stories. The reason is,

“These people will look

    and look, but never see.

They will listen and listen,

    but never understand.

If they did,

they would turn to God

    and be forgiven.”

Jesus then told them:

If you don't understand this story, you won't understand any others. What the farmer is spreading is really the message about the kingdom. The seeds that fell along the road are the people who hear the message. But Satan soon comes and snatches it away from them. The seeds that fell on rocky ground are the people who gladly hear the message and accept it at once. But they don't have roots, and they don't last very long. As soon as life gets hard or the message gets them in trouble, they give up.

The seeds that fell among the thornbushes are also people who hear the message. But they start worrying about the needs of this life. They are fooled by the desire to get rich and to have all kinds of other things. So the message gets choked out, and they never produce anything. The seeds that fell on good ground are the people who hear and welcome the message. They produce 30 or 60 or even 100 times as much as was planted.

The Harvest to Come

When I lived in eastern Montana, I really grew to respect dry land farmers but not just for the work they did. You see, from my perspective, they had an incredible ability to maintain their focus on the harvest that was coming. I mean, even though they were emotionally held hostage by horrible things over which they had no control, like very little rain or enormous swarms of grasshoppers, they didn’t allow that stuff to become distractions, much less to cause them to become so discouraged that they simply gave up. Instead, they did the work they had to do, looking forward to the time when they could bring in their crops. Their focus was on the harvest to come.

And I think Jesus is challenging us to do the same thing ourselves as Christian disciples. You see, we really are like farmers, scattering the seed by sharing the good news through our words and our work. And as we go about doing what we’ve been called to do, we’re going to encounter all kinds of distractions. You see, whether it’s emphatic opposition or shallow commitment or overloaded lives, we’ll see plenty of reasons to feel discouraged. But rather than either throwing up our hands or curling up into a fetal position, we have reason to maintain our focus and to continue doing the job God has given us. Why? That’s simple; as Christ reminded his disciples, regardless of what they might face along the way, they can be confident that the harvest to come will certainly be worth the effort.