There are few more glorious sights than a field that is ripe for harvest. Harvesting entails hard work, as anyone who lives on a farm knows, but it is also a time of joyous fruition—the culmination of one's labor.
Christ Jesus had some powerful things to say about harvesting the fruits of good. In a parable about the kingdom of heaven he pictures a man who sowed good seed in his field.See Matt. 13:24-30 But an "enemy" came and sowed tares among the wheat, and when the wheat began to ripen some poisonous weeds were found growing with it. His servants wanted to know if they should gather out the tares. But the advice to them was, "Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn."
It may seem as if our lives are something like that field. On the one hand we can see all the good that is coming to us as we begin to understand that God is the creator of good alone. On the other hand our human experience does not always match up to what we know is spiritually true, and we feel like despairing when we see in our lives and thinking a patchwork of tares and wheat!
