Full harvest, few workers.

Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.” Matt 9:37

Have you ever found yourself listening to someone, nodding enthusiastically thinking that you have understood everything that they’re saying, only to find that immediately afterwards you haven’t got a clue what they meant; it no longer makes any sense.

I realised this when I re-read what Jesus said to his disciples. It was always seemed so clear and then all of a sudden I thought, ‘What?! How can the harvest be so big without the workers? Surely the workers were there at the sowing?! Surely the harvest in somehow relational to the sowing?’

Jesus is saying [to us], ‘I have call all of you to collect in the harvest.’ Some of us may be driving combined harvesters collecting in whole fields while others may be tenderly picking individual stems. Others still will may be responsible to combing the edge of the fields retrieving those scattered, knocked down, discarded or forgotten.

In my misunderstanding I realised that I had thought that the harvest was a result of our efforts and work, but this is never the case. The harvest belongs to God; it is His work. But He involves us in the harvest, we are employed in the Kingdom for this purpose.