For The Season To Come

For the Season to Come

Take a lesson from the ants, you lazybones. Learn from their ways and become wise! Though they have no prince or governor or ruler to make them work, they labor hard all summer, gathering food for the winter.

Proverbs 6:6-8

My grandfather, one of eleven children, grew up on a farm in Kansas. When Kansas became a dust bowl in the previous century, the family sold the farm and moved to California. I hope to travel to Kansas someday and find their land. My hope is that it’s still being farmed. There’s something satisfying about the continued cycle of life, of seasons.

Summer is a busy time as farmers gather the hay that will feed their cattle and horses. Even when the sun is bright overhead, good farmers think of the winter to come. Amish farmers prepare not only outwardly but also inwardly. Many of their Scripture readings are connected to the agricultural seasons: “In summer, John 4 and Revelations 14 (Ernd Schriften) is read, and then toward the end of summer when the grains have been gathered into the barns, appropriately the harvest scriptures (Einsammeln Schriften), Luke 12 and 13 will be used. Oftentimes the services are held in barns where the well-worn boards of the threshing floor are lightly covered with new hay and the granaries bulging with summer’s bounty of grain.”

Summer is a good time for tending your soul, too. Are you in a bright spot right now? What can you do to plan and prepare for a challenging season you will face in the future? Some men and women tend to bask in the sunny moments and never tend the soil of their interior lives. What farmers teach us—what ants teach us—is the importance of planning ahead.

Do you desire to grow closer in your relationship with God? Do you want to be more diligent in prayer? Listen to what God is speaking to you, and remember that any soul work you do now will pay off when a challenging season comes.

Dear heavenly Father, I thank You for seasons of sunshine that give me a reprieve. Let me not waste these moments; rather, show me today how to tend my soul and draw closer to You.