The things that are happening to us now, are the harvest of thoughts and actions sown in the past. Today's thoughts and actions are seeds being sown for a future harvest.

Sowing and reaping is an almost perfect analogy of life. We can hardly do better than to see life as a process of sowing seed and reaping a harvest and to take care how we sow. Since all of us are now reaping what we once sowed, and sowing what yonder we will reap, it is well that we know the principles of sowing and reaping.

1. You Sow in Patience and Faith

James 5:7-8

Such is a seed that to sow it requires a measure of faith, insight, and patience. In a handful of small shrivelled seed is the potential to feed you for a season, and thereafter the world for centuries. But you must await the harvest. It is not an easy thing to believe in that amazing potential.

Likewise, figurative seed demands a measure of faith and insight. It is hard to be convinced that today’s few words, thoughts, and actions, have the potential to affect our future enormously.

2. You May Sow What Another Reaps

John 4:37-38

Anyone who receives an inheritance knows what it means to reap what another has sown.

Your local church is another example. You enjoy membership in it because a few far-sighted souls once began to assemble, sowing what you now reap.

Another example shows the dark side of the principle: a little child dies of AIDS. The child has reaped what another sowed.

What are you sowing today, that someone else will reap in days to come?

3. You May Sow Wheat and Reap Thorns

Jeremiah 12:13

What you sow, your enemy may destroy. Where good seed was sown, something bad may gro.w

Parents might do everything possible to bring up children well, yet one child falls into bad company and becomes a criminal.

Those who have sown good seed in your local church are mindful of how ready the enemy is to destroy their labour and its fruits, and to leave them with a harvest of thorns.