Grief. Going. Healing.

It’s a beautiful day in the sunshine state. Or so people keep telling me. I personally think it’s a little cold, but what do you expect when you’ve spent the last year of your life in a country where it was a cold day if we weren’t in the 80s. The nice thing about jet lag and spending time alone, it gives you plenty of time to think.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my time overseas. I’m sure this will be the case for a while. I know at some point, I’ll have to talk to different churches and organizations about my time and what I did. People like numbers, right? Someone is doing ministry, we should see results. Salvations. Baptisms. Something! Sure, I can give account for the times I shared the gospel or the times I had bible studies or gospel conversation, but people really like to hear about the other parts. I’m jumping topics, but don’t worry, we will circle back to this paragraph.

When I was younger, I went to preschool as most children do. My preschool had us make a poster of sorts telling our class about ourselves. It contained pictures of us with our family. Pictures of just us. It told everyone our favorite color. Our favorite food. You name something everyone wants to know about a little kid, and I am sure it was on that poster. One of the questions I know for sure that was answered was “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. To this day, I’m still not sure why this was my answer. I said I wanted to be a farmer. The reason why you might ask? I wanted to grow my own fruits and vegetables.

Most kids, and I too was guilty of this later on, named things like rockstar, astronaut, doctor. Heck, I wanted to be a storm chaser in middle school/beginning of high school because my parents let me watch Twister one too many times growing up. The idea of driving trucks at tornadoes and yelling “cow!” “another cow!” seemed like a GREAT job to have when I “grew up”. Somewhere along the line, I decided math was fun and cute and took that route to become a math professor. But preschool me, I wanted to be a farmer. Now, as a not preschooler, I’ve come to realize that’s exactly what I am. I am a farmer. Probably not in the way you are thinking though- although I do have an awesome farmers tan. (Get ready, we are about to circle back.)

I’m sure some of you are already guessing where this is going. I’m sure your guess is right, but don’t spoil it for everyone else. In the Gospels, Jesus often used parables related to farming and planting seeds. He talked about seeds that were planted in different types of soil. How some of the seeds grew, some of them sprouted and then just as quickly died, and how some seeds, nothing came of them.

When we think about farming, there are several different jobs that need to be done, right? The first thing that has to be done is the land has to be prepared for whatever it is that is being planted. Once the field is ready, someone has to go and physically plant the seeds of what’s trying to be grown. The seeds have to be watered and tended to. Eventually, if the seeds are planted in good soil, someone will get to go and harvest the crop.

In Matthew 9, Jesus is going around healing people with various illness, calling Matthew to be his disciple, and answering questions from people. In the last part of the chapter, Jesus tells his disciples that the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Here He’s talking about the harvest being those who don’t know Him as the son of God and have never heard the gospel. The laborers He is talking about are those of us who will GO and share with them.

That’s what I’ve gotten to do the last year. I’ve been prepping the field for seeds to be planted and hopefully one day harvested. I’ve also been the one to come alongside the seeds that are growing and tend to them to make sure they continue growing in the right direction. I got to be one of the laborers sent into the harvest. While it definitely isn’t the farming preschool me had in mind, it was far better than everything I could have imagined. I don’t have all of those numbers people want to hear when you return from time overseas, but I was faithful in what He called me to do and what He placed in front of me. I’m looking forward to the day He sends me back to the harvest. Who knew preschool me would be right in predicting I’d be a farmer one day?!