EVERYTHING has its appointed time. For everything, to come, is an hour. For every decision, that must come, tarries the exact moment.
This affects us strangely. Not except with difficulty can our indolent spirit enter into that idea of a decisive moment. And yet all creation shows it.
First the plow cuts through the field. Then the sower goes out to sow, and scatters seed in the plowed furrows.
And when God from heaven sends down sunshine and rain, the ground passes into a state of ferment, seed germinates and springs up, and long weeks, long months our eye feasts itself upon that growth and mellowing of the blades. From morning till evening and from evening until morning grain expands therein. And it seems, as though that grain had no other destiny, than to cover that field with waving gold and magically to increase wealth in nature.
And yet, this was merely appearance.
For at length the trained eye of the farmer sees, that grain in the ears is altogether ripened. And then he observes wind and tide, whether he can count upon dryness of atmosphere. And when the favorable moment is come, his orders go out to his farmhands. And to-morrow, when the sun is but scarcely risen, that field of wheat is doomed to death. That golden yellow grain has for the last time glistened in the sunlight. See, the sickle descends, handled by nimble, agile hand against the bending stalks, and not long, before all the beautiful grain by handfuls lies cast down upon the ground; is presently set up in sheaves; is carried to the threshing-floors; till the orphan and the poor come for the after gleanings. And then nothing remains more save the empty, black, bald field, with its stubble.
Expressive of so much, so deeply significant.
First weeks and months together that quiet, calm, almost perceptible growth and ripening. And then all at once that day of harvest. That sickle thrust into the stalks. And gone is everything that was there.
IN that sowing and growing, that ripening and mowing there speaks a voice of God.
His Holy Scripture constantly points to it. Also in the image of ripening clusters turning blue on the vine, till the vine-dresser cuts off the juicy grapes. But by whatever image, it is always again the same thought, first that slow, quiet becoming and expanding, and then suddenly that breach, that consummation, that mowing or that cutting off. Everything moving forward toward an end, until it is reached, and then at once the stroke of the hand of the mower; that fullness of time; that hour when it is done with what lay behind and that something new takes its beginning and presently begins.
For when the sickle has been thrust in, and every sheaf is brought to the threshing-floor, the first process is indeed ended, but equally surely at once a second begins. Then the grain is threshed and shaken out; the wheat separated from the chaff; the kernel broken or ground into meal; and so ripens by a new process bread that will be food for man; in the human body again by a new process to prosecute another end, and not to rest, till seed scattered by human hands has come back to man and is transposed into his own blood.
And all this disposed and appointed and ordained by God Almighty, Who has measured out the time of sowing and the time of reaping. Who imparted to wheat and to yeast the affinity to form dough and bread. And who now follows up that precious bread with His blessing, to transpose it into the component parts of our own blood.
And what then takes place in every process is always that twofold operation. First that slow ripening and expanding, and then finally that sudden moment, wherein that ripening and expanding find their consummation and He breaks off what was, in order, from what He makes it undergo, to make the new to sprout.
Always His Word, that does not return unto Him void, but doeth that whereunto He sent it. As snow and rain descends the moisture from His treasure chamber. Then the earth drinks it in and soils it. Until in the earth it meets the pregnant grain kernel. This it then makes to swell and burst and to send up a germ. It lets itself be sucked up in the blade. To the ear the moisture penetrates. And when presently the expanded and blessed bread enters into our blood, to strengthen our vital powers, there is always in it yet a drop of that moisture, which God sent out in snow and rain, to give bread to the eater and seed to the sower.
ONE thing especially God’s holy Word requires, that in connection with this you should ever hold before your eyes. It wills, that you should consider, how it goes with all the things around you, and that it goes the same way with yourself.
As those blades sprang up in the field and grew, and presently were harvested away from that field, so also bloom and ripen the children of men on the field of our human life; and for them also comes the hour of consummation, that the sickle descends upon the blades, and the place which they occupied in the field is no more known.
And here too again the selfsame antithesis. First weeks and years together that quiet, steady, seemingly ever continuous ripening and mellowing in the field; and then suddenly that turn in the condition, that thrusting of the sickle into the blades. And then it is ended and the head droops, till presently the place is empty.
An antithesis, a sudden transition, which, however frequently seen, ever yet so surprises us, that almost no one is prepared, when the sickle comes to him. Things seemed to go along so sweetly. So imperceptibly a new part of the way seemed to join itself to the parts already covered. Advance was so gradual, so steady, so lasting. After every evening always again a morning; after every winter again a spring with flowers that opened, and birds, which in the branches sang their song unto God. Ah, why then should there come an end? Why no endless going on?
And yet, that end comes, because God lives and has command over you and makes disposition of you, and because He granted you this quiet growing and expanding, not for the sake of that growing and expanding, but that there should be an harvest for Him.
For as the husbandman bides the moment, when that growing shall be ended, and his word to his servants: “Thrust in the sickle and reap” (Rev. 14, 15) can be spoken, so tarries and bides God the Lord with every one of His children of men. Ever anticipating that appointed moment, that fixed hour, when ripening shall be ended, and the fruit of all His care, which He expended upon you, can be carried into His Kingdom.
Your world is for Him. It is His field, in which all that blossoms and ripens, ripens and blossoms for Him, that He, the Lord of the harvest, may also from this field obtain His harvest.
And all the days of your life He takes notice of you, looking forward to that moment of consummation, when the fruit of His labor comes to Him.
O, BLESSED is he, whom it may befall in that hour of harvest, that, presently purified by the winnow, he may prove a precious fruit from the field of the world for the Lord his God.
Then the sickle mows not to destroy, but gathers in for God’s eternal Kingdom. Then there has been a growing and blooming, then there was a ripening and expanding. And the object was attained: the consummated and perfected fruit, which then enters upon a new future, after new ordinances to serve God the Lord in His holy counsel.
Let every man take heed.
The sickle, that mows the full ears of grain, also mows away the weeds that have sprung up, and also mows away the empty or scorched blades, from which no grain shall dance upon the threshing floor.
Then it did not go according to God’s Word, but against God’s Word.
Then it was no growing but degenerating, no ripening and expanding but emaciating and shrinking.
And when then the day of harvest comes, the judgment is so inevitable.
The winnow, shaken by God’s holy hand, separates so irrevocably the wheat from the chaff.
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