January 13th (WOW, already a half-month of 2025 has gone!) is a reminder of what Gordon Lightfoot writes in a song ... "time doesn't wait for nobody to find what they're after, It just keeps on rolling on down the deep canyons and through the green meadows into the broad ocean." That lyric reminds me of what my friend Jimmy Rane told me one day ... "Daylights a' burning." Time is a finite resource. So ... with a lot of chaos in the world around us, we remember that Jesus said, "You know the saying, 'four months between planting and harvest.' But I say, wake up and look around. The fields are already ripe for the harvest! (John 4:35)."
There are 3 instructions in what Jesus tells his disciples in this prologue from the story of the Samaritan woman. They are simple, but necessary if we are to proceed with any urgency toward what God is calling us to do.
1. Wake Up - In his Wake Up Call devotional, JD Walt begins each devotion with a prayer. It says, "Wake up sleeper ... rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you!" The prayer comes from Ephesians 5:14, and harkens from passages in Isaiah and Malichi. The Bible is in a constant state of calling God's people to wake up. I did a sermon once called, "I Believe In Zombies." Zombies are, of course, walking, dead people. I see them every day. We walk past the stricken traveler on the side of the road. We walk past the signs, warning us that something is right. We know differently. Last week we sang "Is He Worthy." The first line of the song is a statement and reply ... "Do you think the world is broken? We do!" We see fires, floods, broken people, pettiness, anger, deceit, destruction, and all manners of struggle. Yet, we are content to be a cog in the wheel of time. JD Walt says, wake up! Rise from the dead. We are called and equipped for such a time as this!
2. Look around - Isaiah 43 says, "Behold, I am doing a new thing! Do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert (Isaiah 43:19)!" We know we are living in this time of wilderness. I think we, if we look around, can see and feel the parched desert. God's word has said this would happen. Amos 8:11-12 says, "A time is coming, says the Lord, when I will send a famine upon the land. Not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord!" We HAVE the word of the Lord in the Scriptures we have been given. We HAVE God's Holy Spirit to open, teach, and unpack the word of the Lord. What we are missing is eyes to see and ears to hear. Notice the passage from Amos says ... 'a famine of HEARING the word of the Lord.' I wonder if this is why Jesus (and John in Revelation) frequently say, "Let he who has eyes see and let him who has ears hear." We are called and equipped for such a time as this!
3. See the ripeness of the fields - Here is what we often miss. In our sheltered settings ... in our pristine buildings ... in our preferred styles of worship ... we forget about the mission and purpose. In 2025 I will pound the mission and purpose into our consciousness. Forgive my repetition, but the Mission is to be God's blessing to the world (not just America, which, by the way, isn't hearing/seeing/perceiving our message) ... Genesis 22:18. Our Purpose is to be part of God's plan to "bring people to Himself (Exodus 19:4)."
Wake up! Look around! The fields are ripe! The Church has a mission. The Church has a purpose. Time keeps "rolling on down the deep canyons and through the green meadows into the broad ocean." We worship and follow the Lord of the harvest. Let's get down to business!
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