Harvesting

June 14, 2006

By Greg Ebie

If you look at my thumbs you will see that they are not green. Plants and I just don’t seem to get along. All I seem to be able to grow are weeds. The last couple of years I planted a garden. I found myself wondering if it was worth the effort for what I harvested.

Perhaps I’m discouraged because I have seen what can happen in a garden when someone has a green thumb. A real gardener harvests three to four times what I do in the same space.

“It’s through me, Lady Wisdom, that your life deepens,
and the years of your life ripen.
Live wisely and wisdom will permeate your life;
mock life and life will mock you.”

(Proverbs 9:11,12, The Message)

The law of the harvest cannot be broken; whatever you sow you will also reap. (See Galatians 6:7,8.) Likewise if you don’t sow any seed, then there will be no harvest; I’ve got to plant the garden if I want to get anything out of it. However, you can increase your harvest through the right use of wisdom and a little hard work. Maybe that’s why my thumb isn’t green; I don’t work it hard enough.

Just like planting a garden, we have a choice of how we want to live. We can play the fool or we can learn and apply wisdom to how we live our lives from day to day.

Solomon shows us that wisdom adds to our life; our days will be full instead of empty. Like the wise gardener, we will have a bountiful and ripe harvest when we follow the path of wisdom.

In the long run we are only hurting ourselves when we play the fool. Granted, “easy street” doesn’t require as much work. But in the end all we have to show for our lives is just weeds. We reap what we sow.

If we mock life, then life will just laugh at us in return. But when we choose to follow the path of wisdom, even though it will require more diligence on our part, we end up with a life that is full and overflowing.

Your choice: Play the fool and your life will be spoiled and rotten in the end, or you can become wise and discover your years have ripened to produce an abundant harvest.

D. Greg Ebie is senior pastor of Praise Assembly of God in Garrettsville, Ohio, and an author of Daily Bread devotionals.