Handpicking The Crops
Are you a hand picker in God’s harvest? Do you faithfully labour in His fields, patiently encouraging one person here, and another there?Does the work you are called to seem tedious, insignificant, and as if it contributes little to the God’s kingdom? In contrast, others seem to be like a plough, or a combine harvester; their work is big, active, loud, and seems to produce abundant fruit and results in a short time. They move quickly from field to field, gathering in the many that come under their influence. While we rejoice that it is God who is reaping and blessing this harvest, we may have secret doubts about our calling, and desire to also be involved in such a spectacular work. Are you also unsettled, comparing your labours with that of others? As you read books, watch television. surf Christian internet sites, listen to sermons and testimonies and are bombarded with reports of apparent great success, do you become discouraged, and discontented? While other Christian workers say they have too many speaking invitations, hundreds of emails, or long prayer lines, or miracles, you look at the handful of people you minister to and wonder if you are wasting your time? Progress and growth is slow; such believers need much time, care and patience. Do not think you are alone, for Amy Carmichael, the great missionary to India who established homes of refuge for young girls who would be abused, also had such doubts. She wrote that when she heard of wonderful things done elsewhere by the servants of God, though she was glad, yet she also ‘felt unsettled. There are days when I fly away to the place where souls are flocking to You’, she wrote.
Do you also fly away in your imagination, to the place and time, the great Christian ministry someday, when great success will be yours? It may not be that the results you desire are for your own selfish ends; they may also come from a deep desire to see Christ formed in the lives of all people. But if we you live in this fantasy world, you have left your own field. How do we resolve this? God’s word to Amy Carmichael is also His word for us. God assured her that ‘not all fields are reaped with the sickle, some crops must be hand picked’. How Amy must have understood fully what the Lord meant, as in India she would have observed the patient, steady work of the tea pickers as they carefully selected and plucked the tender tips from the bushes. Such plants that must be individually hand picked would be destroyed by other mechanical means. Read Isaiah 28: 23-29, and see how God has His perfect method for the sowing, and harvesting of each grain.
“ For dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge, nor is the cartwheel driven over cumin…”
In God’s field, we complement each other. Though one may reap, like a thresher, and one may break up the ground with the plough, God gives the increase. He has equipped each of us for the work He desires to do in and through us, “For His God instructs and teaches him properly”. It is unfortunate that in the church we tend to praise and reward those who, by temperament or gifting, do everything in a big way. God knows and sees the hidden ones, the hand pickers. Those who persevere with the defeated, the broken, the crushed, the vulnerable. Those who seek out ‘the one’, and value them as if they were the many. We need the revelation that Amy had; our times are in God’s hands, and He is not about to waste our time.
When the call seems small remain faithful to your Lord, for God will never say ‘ well done, you good and successful servant’, but will commend us for being faithful. (Matthew 25:23). When the call seems small, remember you are in good company, for no one excelled in this calling of ministering to the ‘one’ more than Christ Himself. Ask the woman at the well.
Linda Guy.