Patience For The Harvest

The seeds that fell on the good soil represent honest, good-hearted people who hear God’s word, cling to it, and patiently produce a huge harvest. Luke 8:15

JESUS TOLD THE PARABLE of the sower and the soils at a time when few were following him. To the disciples it didn’t make sense. Here was the Messiah the Israelites had been waiting and longing for, here was the King who was promised, yet the people were rejecting him instead of embracing him, picking up stones to kill him rather than bowing the knee to him.

The parable doesn’t explain why people respond the way they do, but it does identify the source of the problem —human hardness, shallowness, and self-indulgence.

As we spread the seed of the Good News of Jesus in our own home, how we pray it will fall on good soil in the hearts of our children! We don’t want it to fall on shallow or rocky soil. We want them to “cling to it” as if their lives depend on it —because they do. We don’t want them to easily let go of it when they walk out the door of our home. We want the seeds we are spreading to produce a huge harvest in their lives over the seasons ahead. But we have to be patient. We can’t expect an instant, enormous harvest.

Not every Christian produces the same amount of fruit. There are different conditions in the soil that cause different levels of fruitfulness in the crop. If the seed of the gospel has taken root in the lives of our children, it will bear some fruit. It may be just a little fruit. Perhaps it will only be the fruit of a convicted conscience that —at least for now —does not develop into fully flowering repentance. What we’re looking for is even the smallest sign of fruitfulness. And what we need is the patience to wait for the seed we have planted to produce a huge harvest over a lifetime as our children grow in fruitful discipleship to Jesus.

Father, you are the Master Gardener. You know the soil of my heart and that of ________’s. My prayer today is that you would plow up the soil in all of our hearts by your Spirit so that we are ready to receive your Word, so that it will be implanted deep into our lives. Give us the will to cling to it. Help us to wait patiently for its flowering.