In Other Words Tuesday for October 30, 2012

A Fallen Grape

                 

Quote: The harvest will not self-reap but the harvest will self-destruct if it’s not reaped.  Wayne Corderio

 

For the month of October we have gone from the beginning to the end of planting a crop that God would be proud of. Definitely a crop yielding the fruit the Lord wants us to yield in our Christian walk and talk. We prepared our soil, picked out our seeds, planted them, nourished and pampered our garden and now we get to “reap what we sowed.” Ouch! Do we really have to? Yes, we now come to the point where we finally reap what we’ve sown.

 

I remember when way back I finally woke up to that reality myself. It happened when the harvest of the crop I had planted fifteen years earlier was staring me in the face and I couldn’t believe what I had. The more I thought about it and back-tracked my steps over the years there was no denying it. What I had reaped was exactly what I had sown.

 

We can have our educated guesses on why our crops have failed here and there but when it comes to the actual growth of a crop there is no denying. Like it or not it comes out exactly what we sowed. Problem is at the time of our planting season we don’t think too much about precisely what it is this will yield that I’m doing today. Does the fourteen year-old child think that smoking a cigarette will get them the crop of lung cancer later? No. Is the person enjoying their donut breakfast for the fifth time this week think about the heart attack they will yield years from now due to being overweight? No.

We seem to fall into crop failure mode sometimes I’ll call it. As a young girl I heard the whole scoop about brushing my teeth but I never did it well. Now as an adult I would like to shake my finger at that young girl for the crop her behavior reaped that I now have to deal with. We just don’t get it. The one major “Murphy Law” you could call it that will never change is, “You reap what you sow” yet we refuse to believe it. We like the theory of, “It will never happen to me” or the one where we go to church on Sunday and pray for crop failure from our weeks’ worth of activity. It doesn’t work that way.

 Another thing about harvesting a crop is the fact that it doesn’t make sense to put all that time and effort into it only to miss handle it once it’s grown causing it to ruin. A crop may not be able to self-reap but it can very easily self-destruct if it’s not harvested properly. Like anything we grow it needs to be properly harvested or we could lose all we worked so hard to produce. When my dad raises his hay if he bales it up before its dry the bales will get moldy on the inside. What good does that do him? None!  What he has grown needs to be properly brought in and handled in order to benefit from the labor.

 Our Christian lives are no different. It doesn’t make sense to put all we have into growing the crop God can be proud of only to let it self-destruct out in the fields it was produced in. Our talent or gift for singing, writing, serving others, helping others, speaking, teaching, and so much more simply gone to waste because we don’t handle the harvest from them properly. Picking them and storing them frequently and correctly in order to enjoy the harvest from them.

 If you think about it when it comes to our Christian gifts or crops we aren’t the only ones that will benefit from them. For my dad the hay he grows is strictly for the cattle he raises and for no one else. However, with our spiritual crops they benefit not only us but those around us as well. In Leviticus 19:10 the Israelites were told not to glean their entire harvest because God wanted them to leave the fallen fruit for the poor or stranger who happens to come along.

Truly what a blessing it is to get even the benefit of a fallen grape here and there from someone who is producing as God would want them to. This should be a goal for our own garden to be that person for someone else. Someone producing well enough that even a fallen fruit here and there can be used to help others and glorify God’s kingdom.

It may be a part of our harvest we may never see but with God watching over us we can rest assure it won’t go by unnoticed. A crop self-reaped instead of self-destroyed as we spread to others the benefit of a fallen grape or fruit from the garden of our heart and the fruit basket of our soul.

 **Next week I won't get to participate in Tuesday's writing because I will be at a Cancer Treatment of America clinic having my cancer evaluated. See you the week after that!

© 2012 Karen J Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing