Faith Works 11-16-19

Faith Works 11-16-19

Jeff Gill

 

After the harvest is over

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After the harvest, we prepare to give thanks. Thanksgiving doesn't come until a bit later this year, Nov. 28, but it is upon us as surely as is pumpkin spice. For those of us in the cities and towns, our rural touchstone, our country sensibility, comes down to a pumpkin spice candle if not the dreaded latte, but that's just a faint whiff of the reality all around us.

 

After the harvest is the season we're moving into; the leaves have fallen, and snow isn't general all over Ohio, but we can tell we're in a time of transition even if we've never sat on a tractor.

 

After the harvest, and the work done by farmers and farmer families and farmer friends, we drive past open, cleared, stubbled fields. And it looks like their work is done.

 

After the harvest, the work is not over, but it does change.

 

After the harvest, the crops have to be stored or sold or sorted or sifted (or a little of all four). After the harvest, the fields have a final tending before the frost goes deep; even in the age of no-till, there's work to do to put the soil and stubble in condition for the long winter in readiness for next spring. After the harvest, the equipment must be cleaned and sharpened and stowed. The harvest is over, but the work continues.

 

In the harvest of faith, we celebrate baptism and new beginnings, but the work of discipleship continues. Faith can't just be about the washing of sin and waiting for heaven. If that's all it is, we have to puzzle at what God's plan is really all about, or "why the Lord tarries so" as my grandmother used to say.

 

From the harvest of faith that is confession and redemption, we have the work of discipleship, the making and shaping of disciples, to occupy our long winter until the spring of ultimate advent. Not the Advent we start Dec. 1, perhaps, but the time of arrival of the end which is not a new winter, but a glorious spring. That promised coming of a redeemer is not just an end, but a new beginning. Even so, having been harvested in faith into the storehouse of the Lord, are we just waiting for that coming again, that second Advent? No.

 

After the harvest, in the storehouse, whether you imagine that to be a high ceilinged church or a quiet corner of your morning at home before going out to work, in the place where you gather together your intentions and keep them safely hid in Christ with God, it takes work to "just keep" the fruit of the harvest in store and in shape.

 

After the harvest, we all have tools to sharpen and storehouses to clean out in the recesses of our hearts, around the workshop of our thoughts. Winter might keep us closer to home, but there is still work to be done, after the harvest.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him what you do after the harvest at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.