To reap what you sow, you must first sow.
1 Corinthians 15:35-38
Typically, when we think of sowing and reaping, we think of hard work and reward – something like planting a garden and then watching it grow from tiny seeds into something marvelous (and tasty).
But like those that sow and reap, the terms can mean many different things.
Let’s back away from the traditional thought patterns and think more along the lines of sowing as it’s used in today’s Tiny Words. Big Life. Bible verse.
In that sense, sowing can be seen as an investment… something you give of yourself – as an act of faith. We’re sowing something we can’t put our finger on.
But like a seed in the garden, we hope to reap nonetheless.
Think of your family and friends. You have certainly sown love and compassion, while sharing the firstfruits of your blessings. In return, you should hope to reap things that benefit them – not yourself. These are things that you can’t pluck from the vine and put in your garden basket. You want them to feel loved and be secure in the fact that you love them and care for them. You want the best for them.
So I ask this question: Are you being intentional about your sowing of love, compassion, and sharing of your firstfruits?
The Apostle Paul is talking to the church in Corinth about their investment in having faith in Jesus. They have sown their beliefs which he reminds them will be reaped upon their death through the creation of a new resurrected body that will spend eternity with God.
Charles Spurgeon said it this way, ““Dear friends, if such be death – if it be but a sowing, let us have done with all faithless, hopeless, graceless sorrow… ‘Our family circle has been broken,’ say you. Yes, but only broken that it may be re-formed. You have lost a dear friend: yes, but only lost that friend that you may find him again, and find more than you lost. They are not lost; they are sown.”
The Tiny Words. Big Life. takeaway is this: Pray to be intentional about sowing for those you love as well as those that you do not know. Pray to spread the love of God and show grace, mercy, and compassion to those that need it most, without the expectation of personal gain.
And to those of you that have sown in the more traditional sense – by planting a garden with some of those tiny, little seeds that sprout into stalks covered with tomatoes, cucumbers, or any other vegetable that we love down here in the Deep South, holler at me when it’s time to reap!
I ain’t picky! I’ll be thrilled with your “secondfruits“!
1 Corinthians 15:35-38
35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36 How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38 But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.
The world today seems to have less sowing.