Sowing and Reaping

I was raised in a church that talked about sowing and reaping, a law of nature instituted and created by God. Galatians 6:7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.

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It’s easy, they say. A farmer sows corn kernels, placing them carefully in the ground according to the determined depth and the optimal amount of space between each seed, covering them gently, yet firmly patting the soil over top. Then the farmer lets nature do it’s work. Sun and rain mixed with the passing of time will produce a crop of corn unless some unplanned, unforeseen event takes place. That’s the law of sowing and reaping.

Sowing and reaping carries over into the spiritual world as well. It’s a God-given statute; what a person sows they will reap the harvest thereof, in life, in relationships, in business.

I recently heard good message. Although the message wasn’t about sowing and reaping per se, the pastor did touch on the subject. I thought I knew what to expect and where he was going.

He said that some people who were listening to him speak feared this sowing and reaping concept. Those people had sown bad seeds of hatred, greed, lust and selfishness. Hearing that they would reap those things they had sown wasn’t a pleasant thought. In fact, it was rather scary.

Then he said that there are others who were putting their hope in this law of nature because they had sown seeds of kindness, love, hope and goodness. Therefore, those people had hope in the harvest that was to come.

I sat there waiting for the next option, wondering what he would say. I had never really thought about sowing and reaping in this way before so I was anxious to hear what more he had to say. Because I knew that there had to be more to it.

He didn’t say another thing about it.

I was frustrated, wondering about the people who had sown good things, faithfulness, trustworthiness, honesty, integrity and love, yet the harvest they reaped wasn’t any of those things. What about those people? They don’t fit into either of those categories, so what about them? It’s not as black and white as the choices he laid out. It’s simply not that cut and dry.

Here’s what I came up with, left to my own devices, although I did talk with a couple of people about it. When a farmer sows the seeds and begins to see those plants poke through the ground, he also sees weeds as well. In fact, there are usually a lot of weeds that come up naturally, seeds the farmer didn’t sow. That’s another law of nature. It’s not fair. It doesn’t seem right but it happens just the same.

That’s the other category. We can’t forget that there are weeds that we reap even though we didn’t plant them. We put good seeds in the ground but sometimes we get weeds…a lot of weeds.

My conclusion is that perhaps the harvest we have sown won’t even be realized in this life. Maybe some of the seeds we sow today will not be reaped until we leave this world. Maybe we are sowing a crop for the life that comes next, the one we spend eternally in the presence of the Father and His Son, Jesus.

Whatever the case may be, sowing good seeds is important even if we don’t reap the things we thought we would see in this lifetime. Keep sowing good seeds and in due time, you will reap the harvest.