I've been reading through John this week and came across this verse which I hadn't entirely noticed before.
"This one sows, that one harvests. I sent you to harvest a field you never worked. Without lifting a finger, you have walked in on a field worked long and hard by others."
I find myself too often feeling as if I'm meant to do both the sowing and the harvesting in life - for many things, but especially when it comes to relationships with people. But after reading Jesus' words, I'm reminded that we are not meant to solve everything on our own, perhaps our role is to only find the corner piece to a puzzle and then hand the rest over to someone else.
I've been close to a few people who have struggled with some really hard stuff in their life, and after a few years pass, I sometimes look back and question how important my role actually was to that person.
During those hard times, I try to make decisions that I won't regret later, always moving forward and keeping my gaze on Christ leading me ahead. But sometimes I confuse regret of 'I could have done more' with regret of 'I could have solved it.'
But reading John 4:37-38, I was reminded that we are not intended to fully and entirely solve problems. No single individual is capable of such a feat.
Sometimes our role is simply to sow the field and let it wait for someone else to come and harvest the crop. In other times of our life, it may look like we came into a situation, had a conversation with a person, and immediately made an impact to that individual. I've had a few moments like those and sometimes I wonder what I did differently for that person compared to others who may have responded differently.
But perhaps it's not what I did, but rather what role I was designed to play for that person. Was I sowing the ground through our conversation, or was I harvesting the work done by many others who had come before me?
It's hard to be the sowers in life, because you don't always see the fruits of your labor. You work long and hard, tending the soil and carefully nitpicking every detail of the field. But all that is left after that is a field ripe for growing something, and it is the harvesters who see the true beauty emerge from your hard work. But we are not to be discouraged for serving that kind of role in life, rather we need to trust in the rightness of the work we are doing.
I recently learned that I played a significant role as a sower to someone very close to me, and although I knew that the work that had been done there involved many hours of conversations and prayer, I wasn't entirely aware of the true beauty that emerged from that field. There were other people who played the role of harvester. But after hearing that person say how important I was to them as a sower, I was humbled by the true mystery of God's work in our lives.
We will never understand the intricateness and detail involved with God's work, rather we will only see that small part of the bigger picture which we are meant to fulfill. But without playing that part, the rest of the field could never be harvested.
We all have people in our lives who have been both sowers and harvesters to us - take the time to really think who those people are, and tell them thank you. It truly means the world.
