Before the Harvest

A favorite photography pursuit for me this time of year is a landscape shot that shows varying crops, side by side, coming to maturity. The different shades of greens, golds, and browns, along with changes in scale and shape and the earth's topography, create a quilted image of supply that will soon be traveling across the nation and around the world to tables and tummies. The beauty of rural life as well as its purpose is most fulfilling. 

In our very agricultural residential setting, our home is surrounded on all four sides with acres of fields planted one year with soybeans and the next year corn. This year, it is soybeans. The farm family who owns the land on three sides of our property are exceptional neighbors and farmers. I have known now five generations of this family and have, for the great majority of my life, shared property lines with them. The parents and grandparents of the current generation managing the farm were my first and greatest impression of farm life, being good stewards of what God had entrusted to them, and faithfulness to God and family. The life I have shared with them has covered the gamut, from playing with goats to riding tractors to a wintery horse-drawn sleigh ride in the snow-covered field between their house and ours. I once dropped in unannounced with city friends to show them the farm, and not thirty minutes later, we were served a plate of warm fresh-out-of-the-oven oatmeal raisin cookies as meeting new friends was treated with delight. 

From generation to generation, the heritage of not just the family farm persists, but the exceptionalism in their care and neighborliness as well. The farm is immaculate, with all the farm equipment put away cleaned, the lawns are neatly cropped, and the split-rail fencing is ever white and intact. There are no brush piles waiting to be burned or obvious get-around-to-it projects cluttering the land they work. It is a family’s generational pristine standard that is focused and embedded in their way that feels right and comfortable to them, and they have been blessed for it. Their love shows, as does their purpose. 

As the bean crops around our house began to grow this year, volunteer corn, as usual, was coming up with it, interrupting otherwise perfectly manicured rows of soy. At the appropriate time, back out into the fields they went with their tractors pulling sprayers dispatching formula that specifically inhibits an enzyme necessary for the corn to grow. Within a matter of days, the volunteer corn had been thwarted, and the beans thrive, brilliantly green and full, for acres and acres. The weathered fencing around one field’s edges appears as stitches to a quilt where it meets the clean lines of another field and a different crop. It is all picture-worthy, indeed. It is picturesque because of its birth and growth from the dust of the earth with all its needs for development met. To the extent its custodians have authority over the circumstances, it will finish its season in a state of perfection. 

In Matthew 13:24 and following, Jesus tells a crowd clamoring for His teachings the parable of the weeds. In this illustration, He explains a man owned a field and used quality seed to plant a crop of wheat only to have weeds come up amidst what had been purposefully sown. The field owner explained to his servants that the enemy had done this, but when the servants asked if they should remove the weeds, the owner said, “No … because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time, I will tell the harvesters, ‘First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn’” (Matthew 13:29-30, NIV throughout). In verses 37 through 39, Jesus explains the parable. The field owner is the Son of Man, the field is the world, the good seed represents the people of the kingdom, the bad seed represents the people of the evil one, the harvest is judgment, and the harvesters are angels. 

When I think of my neighbors alongside this analogy, I sense vicariously an anxiousness to cleanse and purify the field and make no delay in getting it done. We want this field to be pristine. That is the standard. That is the commitment. That would satisfy a landscape photographer’s quest for the ideal. That would bring forth more bounty and more reward for the labor. That would seem responsible. That, however, is not the reality. We are growing among the weeds, and that is how it is to be until a time of God’s appointment. 

If the Son of Man is the owner of the field, and the field is the world, then Jesus owns the whole world. We grow among the weeds because Jesus, while in a position to judge, said of himself, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). John said, “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him” (John 3:17).  

We as Christians have been remade — created anew — through Jesus Christ such that we are fortified against evil. Colossians 3:9b-10 says, “you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” The Greek word for knowledge in this use is not just objective awareness, but recognition. This is to say we as our new selves not only understand who God is, but we recognize intimately who He is. It is through our Maker’s intent we are equipped to wring free of throttling weeds. He birthed us once again from the dust equipped to prevail. “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God” (1 John 3:9). This birth is life eternal. It is blessed. It is love. It is purpose. 

Psalm 1:1-3 describes the blessing. “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on His law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do, prospers.” Created anew and belonging to God, we are blessed by lingering near Him and learning what He adores. Weeds should have nothing on us because we do not “walk” with them; we walk with God. 

The apostle John in 2 John 1:6 describes love that is forthcoming: “This is love: that we walk in obedience to His commands. As you have heard from the beginning, His command is that you walk in love.” Being true to the ways and will of our Heavenly Father is our path to that recognition knowledge referenced earlier in this article. It is where we understand the love of God, not just for us but for all, so deeply, we have grasped what would otherwise have been a mystery. This readies us further for our sojourn among the weeds, but more so, offers a reason for it. “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10). There is purpose to His plans … always. 

Weeds in the owner’s field may abound, but so does the blood of Jesus. We must make room for new growth among us, plan for it, pray for it, and work for it. The next time you’re passing a field where you see its bounty disrupted by unwanted growth, perhaps you’ll reflect on the Son of Man’s word that this is how it is going to be until the judgment. We’ve been recreated and fortified against the entanglements. Even among the weeds, we are blessed, understand God’s love more deeply, and have been raised up with purpose. In fact, Matthew 13:43 describes the harvest of the wheat from the parable in this manner: “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” Now that will be picture perfect.