Time is determined in the wider and Divine scheme of things.
The farmer knows that waiting for harvest is
a calculated risk of faith just as is any investment. Your returns are not always guaranteed,
he/she knows that just because he/she scattered seed does not mean every seed
will sprout; there are different types of soil and not all of them are
conducive to sowing or growth, and right there his/her patience begins to be
tested.
Not every
seed will sprout, but the seed that does will yield more than was
scattered. In agriculture that is a
given, if you put your seed in the right soil at the right time your returns
will yield more than what you put in.
Solomon
said, Ecc 3:1 “There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven” Patience is born not so much from within our
participation in the processes of life, as it is in also transcending
them. If we become part of our
situation, for the most part we can’t see our way through. Yet, if we stand above it, we can identify a
way out of the forest.
Patience inevitably has to do with time, your success
is not in how long or short it takes but in achieving your goal?
The farmer knows that every activity must
happen in its season otherwise, there will be no harvest. We control the sowing not the time, and our
frustration is that time is not in our control, we may control events, but we
can’t control time. We may prepare for
the eventual, but we can’t control the ultimate, the farmer scatters the seed
but is not responsible for its growth. We can’t manipulate time because it is
determined in the wider scheme of all creation.
Seasons come
and seasons go.
The cliché
is true, “Seasons come, and seasons go.”
This is a natural law established by the Creator of all things, Ge 8:22 “As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will
never cease.” Some things are
just meant to be because they are determined in the wider and Divine
scheme of things.
Seasons
can’t be wished away we just have to know how to prepare and to deal with
them. Some seasons are better or worse
than others, Paul wrote to young Timothy, 2Ti 4:21 “Do your best to get here before winter,” and
to Titus he said, Tit
3:12 “As soon
as I send Artemas or Tychicus to you, do your best to come to me at Nicopolis,
because I have decided to winter there.”
Even the ant
knows the significance of preparing in good season, Pr 6:6-8 “Go to the ant, you sluggard;
consider its ways and be wise! It has no
commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and
gathers its food at harvest.”
Egypt survived a severe and devastating drought because Joseph prepared
in good season. Solomon warned, Pr 20:4 “A sluggard does not plow in season; so at harvest time he looks but
finds nothing.”
Planning and
implementation are a big part of a successful initiative, but it does not
guarantee that things will go according to plan. Sometimes the wheels come off, and when they do,
we stop the process identify the problem and get back to work. We don’t give up on the whole machine just
because some nuts and bolts are coming off.
Waiting for
harvest demands a rooted and robust spirit
It is easier
to wait for harvest if you are prepared for it because the demands on the human
spirit are greater if you are caught unprepared. Every process makes demands, and our ability
or inability to deal with the process is the exact point where we win or
lose. One way to hold on to a cause is
to believe in it, the farmer believes in his/her cause even if it may not always
go according to plan. A robust spirit is
turned on by what it does not see not what it sees, in a sense it is a prisoner
of hope. Today may be dark and gloomy
but tomorrow is a new day. Hope always
anticipates the break of a brand new day.
It is not foolish because it waits for nothing; it just has not seen
what it is waiting for yet.
When Joseph
prepared for the “Seven lean years,” the surrounding nations could have done
the same, they had the same opportunity, but it was wasted. Sometimes we have to endure excruciating
tough times because we did not prepare for them in good times; somehow, we made
the absurd assumption that good seasons last forever.
If you are
caught unprepared, you will have to be satisfied with the crumbs that fall off
the tables of others. Joseph’s brothers
despised him and ended up bowing to him, he had become their sole deliverance
in the whole world. In the order of
things beyond our control it might come as a surprise when we lick the boots of
the very people we despise, not because we were destined to be but because we
missed our opportunity when they picked theirs up. The farmer thrives because he can identify
advantage in season and out of season.
Where you can’t sow peanuts, you can always try something else.
There is always string of events that lead to the
harvest, the plowing season is followed by the rainy season and the rainy
season is followed by the season for the first ripe grapes and so on. Harvest time is always a consequence of a
string of well-calculated events that lead to a desired end in time.
Sometimes we plowing due season and the rains
don’t come. If they don’t come, we wait
and return to the fields in the next season.
Sometimes the harvest is almost ready and the bad rains come and destroy
everything, still we harness our energies and prepare for the next haul because
we know that in the end, whether time is in our favor or not, it is not in our
hands because it is determined in the wider scheme of things. So we plan and prepare well, we wait until
tomorrow can sing us the praises of harvest time. 1Co 9:10 “…because when the plowman plows
and the thresher threshes, they ought to do so in the hope of sharing in the
harvest.”
The point is
the scattering of the seed not the harvest.
A good
harvest is always the consequence of good scattering or plowing, if you focus
deeply on the latter the former comes without any effort. Paul spoke to this principle when he wrote, Gal 6:9 “Let us not become weary in doing
good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we don’t give up.”
A good
farmer knows that the seed grows all by itself nurtured by nature, you don’t
sow for harvest but because it runs in your veins, it is your way of life, so
whether the harvest is good or not you return to do what you are passionate
about and then wait. James taught, Jas 5:7 “Be patient, then, brothers,
until the Lord’s coming. See how the
farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop and how patient he is for
the autumn and spring rains.”
The right to
hope
Tillich said,
“But nobody can live without hope, even if it were for the smallest things
which give some satisfaction even under the worst conditions.” This was true for Frankl and many of his
comrades in the Nazi death camps, maybe the day for liberation would come,
maybe not, but hope kept it alive. It is
in the nature of hope to sustain hope, even if we know that in our hoping
nothing is permanent or sure, we can still hope against hope, because if we
lose the ability to hope we have in effect given up on life itself.
In hope we
wait for what we don’t see or have, as Paul reminded the Romans, Ro 8:25 “But if we hope for what we don’t
yet have, we wait for it patiently.” A person who knows how to hope is eventually
a better person than the person who has no hope or does not know how to
hope. Foolish hope is hope without an
object, it is what Tillich calls laziness; it is lethargic without
direction and hopeless. For hope to be
true it must have something to hope for, hope in, and hope against, without
these ingredients hope is hollow.
Hope is more
than being optimistic or maintaining a positive mind, it is faith in
possibilities because nothing is impossible with God. Hope in nothing is short-lived fresh air but
it is not spiritual, it works like the opium, which takes your pain away, but
only for a moment. It is hope in a
vacuum and not in the divinity of God as the ultimate Supreme Being beyond
which there is not and can’t be any other.
Tillich (Taylor 1987, 329) describes it well
when he says “World history is a cemetery of broken hopes, of utopias which
had no foundation in reality.” For
hope to be hopeful, it must anchor its hopefulness in God.
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