The Harvest Has a Season

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. The danger he names is not dramatic failure. 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.

That is how most men lose this fight in the end. Not in a single catastrophic night but in a gradual giving up, a fading of the small faithful acts that kept them near to God. Paul sees that coming and plants a promise in the path of it. In due season we will reap.

In due season is the phrase that asks for patience. 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. The condition is only that you not give up, that you keep doing the good even in the long stretch where nothing seems to be growing.

You do not have to feel the harvest coming to keep sowing toward it. You only have to not quit before the season turns.

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.