Are We Ready for the Harvest?

I nearly got run off the road by a combine this week.

I was visiting the part of rural Ontario where I grew up, and it is harvest season. Around there, that means enormous pieces of farm equipment lumbering down roads that were never really designed for them.

Nobody seems particularly bothered by it.

It’s harvest time.

As I watched other combines working the fields (safely off the roads), I found myself thinking about Jesus’ words:

“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
— Matthew 9:37–38

Growing up around farms, there is something incomprehensible about the thought of a harvest being ready and wasting in the fields for lack of anyone being prepared to bring it in.

Think of everything that has already happened.

The field has been cultivated. Seed has been planted. Fertilizer applied. Weeds controlled. Equipment maintained. The farmer has watched the weather and waited through an entire growing season.

And yet, for all his work, the farmer didn't actually make the wheat grow nor does he even really control when the harvest will be ready.

The Apostle Paul understood that:

“I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.”
— 1 Corinthians 3:6

That is a wonderfully freeing thought.

We don't make people come alive spiritually.

God does that.

We don't change hearts.

God does that.

We are invited to participate in something God has already been doing.

Then comes the moment when the crop is ready.

And suddenly everything changes.

The combines come out. Trucks begin moving. Farmers work long hours. Enormous machines take over narrow country roads because there is a window of time when the harvest is ready.

Imagine doing all that work and then simply leaving the crop standing in the field.

When Jesus looks at the wayward crowds around Him, He sees something remarkable.

He sees a harvest.

He doesn't look at them as problems to be solved or as evidence of a culture moving in the wrong direction. Matthew tells us that He looks at them with compassion because they are “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

And then He says:

The harvest is plentiful.

I wonder if we still see people that way.

But if I can stretch the farming metaphor perhaps a little further;

Harvesting isn't simply pulling grain off a field.

Once the crop comes off, it has to go somewhere.

It must be handled carefully. Transported. Protected. Stored. Incorporated into what has already been gathered. Eventually, it will be used to bring nourishment and life to others.

Perhaps that gives us a fuller picture of our responsibility too.

Jesus didn't teach us to gather converts.

He told us to make disciples.

People need communities where they can be known and loved. They need Scripture. They need encouragement. They need patient people willing to walk beside them while they learn what following Jesus actually looks like.

And in that context of community, they become people through whom Christ brings life to someone else.

So here's the thing: being ready for the harvest means more than simply being willing to share the Gospel.

It means being ready to receive the people God sends us.

Our churches need programs, buildings, budgets, meetings and systems. Farmers need barns, machinery and spreadsheets too.

But nobody farms because they love maintaining the barn!

All of it exists for the harvest.

So here's the question I haven't been able to shake since that massive combine nearly pushed me into the ditch:

If God gave us the harvest we keep praying for, would we even be ready to receive it?

Maybe Jesus' words are an invitation to lift our eyes again.

To see people as He sees them.

Not as problems.

Not as projects.

But with compassion.

A harvest that God Himself has been growing.

And perhaps our privilege is simply to be ready when He invites us into the field.