As Long as the Earth endures, Seedtime and harvest,

Cold and heat, Summer and winter,

Day and night will never cease. Gen 8:22

Having moved home 2 years ago it took a while to organise the back garden so that we could have a vegetable patch. It is only this year that we have begun to enjoy the fruits of our labour in our ‘new’ garden. Starting with a mud patch, two raised beds were built last autumn and during the early part of the year much planting went on. At times it was physically quite hard work yet that was all overridden with the satisfaction our grandchildren Dylan and Rayna gained from harvesting a few carrots or runner beans or picking some cherry tomatoes, blackberries and a seemingly endless supply of courgettes. Much as we might be patting ourselves on the back for these crops we are of course as the verse above reminds us, totally reliant on our Creator God for ‘All things bright and beautiful’ in our gardens.

Imagine what it would be like to walk into a garden where all the work was done for you. Everything had been planted and was ripe for harvesting without having to do any of the sowing, digging, weeding, pest control or watering that gardens need. There are many references to harvests in scripture but it is in John 4:38 that Jesus said ‘I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labour.

I sent you reminds us that it is the Lords work that we have been sent to do and as we go about this we continue what was the hard work of others who have gone before us. At times we might feel as if the Christian life in our present society is an unloved and lonely one, one that does not follow the easy path that so many others appear to choose contentedly, yet as we look beneath the surface we see that the world is hurting in so many ways and so our message of hope in the Lord Jesus Christ is never more needed than it is today.

Others have done the hard work tells of all those who have gone before us, some even martyrs for their faith and none more so than our Lord Jesus Christ who gave his own life willingly for our sins and not just us who follow him even those who don’t give him a second thought. These are our harvest fields, the unsaved generations young and old who surround us and there is yet a hard work to do to prepare the ground for their salvation. That’s a call to each one of us and as we go about this work we can look forward to reap the benefits not just because of those who first shared the good news of the gospel with us but in glorifying our gracious Saviour as we witness Him drawing new believers to faith in Him. We may not have had much direct influence in winning Rehoboth’s harvest field these new souls yet we are called to pray and through this we can continue to prepare the way for those who will one day follow in our footsteps.

The month of October when together with the celebration of the Harvest is the month when many of our organisations take stock of the hard work going on in our churches. So as the Association of Grace Baptist Churches (SE) and the Grace Baptist Mission hold their annual meetings as well as the Northern Conference of Outreach UK, please remember the other churches, their pastors and leaders, the GBM missionaries serving all over the world together with the evangelists of Outreach UK and join with them that we may all share in our labour to bring about that spiritual harvest.

Stuart

Elder Oct 2017