[This is one in a series of mid-week Reflections published by Horley Baptist Church during September 2020]
It’s that time of year when, in much of the northern hemisphere, the harvests are gathered in. In Biblical times, when much of the known world was agrarian, the quantity and quality of the harvest was of major importance. There were no means for long-distance transport or long-term storage to cater for out-of-season needs – what you ate is what you grew. Maybe that is why so much of the Bible has a rural context. Even today, when supermarkets can supply a full range of produce year-round to a majority-urban population, we still need those people who are willing to have a hands-on experience of harvest.
As I write these reflections, I can look out onto an agricultural landscape. In some fields stooks of maize are drying. The sun and the rain have done their work, now it is the time for the farmer to bring in the harvest. The dried stooks will be loaded onto horse-drawn carts and taken home where the kernels are ground for flour or chicken feed, the stripped cobs are kept for winter kindling and the foliage becomes silage for winter feed for cattle. The roots are ploughed back into the ground to provide nourishment for next year’s crop, and thus no part of the crop is without its value.
Sheaves feature in several Bible accounts. Joseph had a dream about sheaves and that got him into a lot of trouble, Ruth gathered amongst the sheaves in Boaz’s field and that changed her life too. Psalm 126 tells us that “Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.” In 1874 Knowles Shaw penned these words with the same theme:
Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves,
We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.
His hymn draws parallels between agricultural harvest and the harvest of human souls. Gathering sheaves is hard work, they are dry, dusty and can be painful to handle, and that is not the end of the process. Are human souls any easier? Some are willing to go out into the field to bring in the harvest. Who is willing to invest the necessary time and effort to encourage and instruct the ‘new harvest’ so that they become a valuable resource in God’s storehouse?
Thank God for such people!
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Contributed by Steve Humphreys; © the Author
