What are you harvesting this year? Strawberries, Raspberries? Do you have an apple tree or two? Some beans or carrots? Salad leaves ready to pick? I was talking to someone who grows things in her raised beds that she can’t find in the shops. I asked ‘such as?’ and she said ‘potatoes’ !? – but it was a variety of potato you can’t buy in the shops.
The things we grow in our gardens we harvest ourselves. That’s part of the deal: you plant, you tend, you harvest and you eat. (It’s a long-standing principle that those who help with the harvest should share in its blessings – see 1Cor9:9) But what if there is too much for one person to gather? We hear about British farmers despairing that local people won’t do the work, and workers from abroad are getting hard to find. There ought to be a parable there, because if produce isn’t harvested it perishes.
Jesus was aware of the problem, but he didn’t use it as a parable so much as a call to prayer: “Ask the Lord of the Harvest to send out workers into his harvest field.” Mat 9:38
Dare we do just that?
Raymond.