The Harvest Has a Season

Let us not be weary in doing good, for we will reap in due season, if we don’t give up. (Galatians 6:9, WEB)

Paul writes a sentence for tired men. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. There is a warning folded into the encouragement, and it is worth hearing plainly rather than rushing past to the promise. The danger he names is not dramatic failure, not some spectacular collapse that a man could see coming and brace against. It is weariness, the slow erosion that makes a man quietly stop doing the good he used to do, not because he decided to but because he ran out of steam and never noticed the moment he coasted to a halt.

That is how most men lose this fight in the end. Not in a single catastrophic night that they will remember for years, but in a gradual giving up, a fading of the small faithful acts that kept them near to God. The morning prayer that gets shorter, then skipped. The confession to a brother that stops happening. The good things do not end with a bang; they thin out until there is nothing left. Paul sees that coming from far off and plants a promise directly in the path of it. In due season we will reap.

In due season is the phrase that asks for patience, and it asks for more than most of us want to give. The harvest is real, but it comes on God's calendar, not yours, and much of the work happens underground where you cannot watch it and cannot measure it. A seed in the dark looks like nothing for a long time. The condition Paul attaches is only one thing, and it is a thing you can do even when weary. Do not give up. Keep doing the good even in the long stretch where nothing seems to be growing above the surface.

You do not have to feel the harvest coming to keep sowing toward it. The feeling is not the point and will not always be there. You only have to not quit before the season turns, and it will turn, in the time God has set for it.

Father, I am weary, and quitting has started to look reasonable. Hold me to the good I know to do, and help me trust that a harvest is coming in your time, if I do not give up.