In an attempt to get back to the titular focus of this thread, here goes nothing:
#12
I’ve written about sowing and reaping on this site before, and some of this might be a repeat of something else floating around on here, but I love the principle of sowing and reaping. I can’t help but think about it this time of the year. I’ve been sowing lots of flower seeds in various beds in my yard and also reaping the blooms from all of the bulbs I planted last Fall (sidenote: feel free to share a pic of some of your favorite flowers currently blooming in your part of the country to brighten up the Buzz).
Sowing and reaping is a universally accepted principle from the natural world. You reap what you sow. If you sow zinnias, you get zinnias; not daisies. If you sow carrots, you don’t get watermelons.
Sometimes, we even apply this principle to our own lives. I see it in play all the time on this site, especially when new guys are trying to start businesses and ask for advice. “Just work hard, make proper cuts, clean up well, and finding work will be no issue.” How many times have you heard that?
But what about sowing and reaping as a spiritual law? What do you think?
Remember Job’s three friends? What miserable comforters they were. They kept telling Job that all the tragedy that had befallen him was a result of some sin he had committed. They got angry with him when he refused to admit to committing any sin of a magnitude that would warrant such retribution. Or, consider when Jesus encountered a man blind from birth in John 9. “His disciples asked Him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.’” And after saying these things, Jesus healed the man.
There was once a man visiting someone in prison. As he walked down the corridor, he saw an inmate mending some pants. The man asked the inmate, “What are you doing, sewing?” “No,” the man said, “reaping.” We have to be careful in our own lives and when looking at the lives of others not to confuse sowing with reaping. Job’s friends were wrong. Job was in the midst of the trial. He was sowing. He reaped at the end of the book when God restored all that he had lost! The blind man was not reaping from his or his parent’s sin. He sowed faith and was given sight!
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary” (Galatians 6:7-9).
No amount of good works can save you. There is only one thing in this life you can sow to reap eternal life: Faith in Jesus Christ.
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