Wednesday, November 19, 2008
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Sowing and Reaping
"Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows" (Galatians 6:7).
This is a pretty simple and straightforward statement that is almost impossible to misunderstand. Don't be deceived into imagining that it can be any other way. God has set the world up this way and it is the way that it is. Whatever you do will come back to you. Life is like a boomerang. You reap whatever you sow whether good or bad, little or much. It is God's law and grows out of his sense of justice. And, even if you get away with something bad for a while or don't see the reward of something good right away, in the end, eventually, you will get what is coming to you.
It has been so since at least the third day of creation, when God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds" and it was so (Genesis 1:11). Seed — what you sow — is designed by God to reproduce after its own kind. That is as true in the physical realm as in the spiritual. After the flood destroyed the earth and God began again, he said that he would never again flood the earth, but that "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease" (Genesis 8:22). God has designed many things to work on the basis of cause and effect and seedtime and harvest — sowing and reaping — is definitely one of those things.
At one point in our lives, we spent three summers and the time in between working on a small fruit and vegetable farm in southern Manitoba. At the same time, I was working very hard to take my fatherly responsibility to teach my children not just life lessons but what they needed to know about faith. The farm was a wonderful place to do that. And although they joke about it now, they all remember the lesson about strife, because we like any normal family experienced some, and how I told them that if they planted strife, they would reap even more strife. They couldn't expect to plant strife and harvest wholesome relationships. To make it even more plain, I asked, "If you plant carrots," and they had helped with the planting, "what do you get, corn?" "No, if you plant carrots, you get carrots!" "You reap exactly what you sow!"
"A man reaps what he sows" is a sobering thought if we have planted a less than desirable seed. Have we sown things like anger or resentment or bitterness or . . . you get the picture? Well, those are the things that will come back to us. That is what we will reap. Another lesson from the farm, however, comes into play here. For, when we would place two little corn seeds in a hole in the ground and add water and sunshine, we might get not just two more seeds, not even two cobs of corn, but maybe five or six with hundreds of seeds on each cob. I not only reap whatever I sow in kind, I reap it in abundance! If it is a good thing I have sown, I will receive much good in return. If it is a bad thing, I might want to root it up before it reaches maturity!
Scripture is full of suggestions that bear out this very line of thinking. "Do not judge, or you too will be judged" (Matthew 7:1). "For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins" (Matthew 6:14-15). "Give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you" (Luke 6:38). "They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind" (Hosea 8:7). "As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it" (Job 4:8). In some way it all comes back to what has been called the Golden Rule, now maybe even more important since whatever we do to others is what will come back to us, thirty, sixty and a hundred-fold:
"So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 7:12).
So in everything, whether in our words or actions, even our inactions, what is it that we are sowing? Is it good seed? Is it a harvest that we really want to bring in once it has ripened? Have we sown much or little? Paul says, "Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously" (2 Corinthians 9:6). And, when Paul says that each of us should purpose in our hearts what we will give and that God loves a cheerful giver, he is not just talking about money. He is talking about everything and anything that we can sow! And the promise of scripture is that when we become thoughtful and intentional about our sowing, knowing that it will also lead to our reaping,
"God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. As it is written, 'He has scattered abroad [sown] his gifts to the poor; his righteousness endures forever' (Psalm 112:9). Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and . . . your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God" (2 Corinthians 9:8-11).
Now, that sounds like the kind of harvest I want to bring in!
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