Jeremiah 8:20
Jeremiah’s words “Harvest is past, summer ended” have me thinking less about what is said in that book and more about the world around me this week. For us, summer is not quite ended, but autumn draws near with nights longer than days and turning leaves, which signal that the time for reaping will soon end.
There is, the author of Ecclesiastes tells us, a time for everything. In my own life, it is a time for harvest. Like the farmers that are our neighbors, I feel like I’ve done my own work of preparation, planting, and tending during the long growing season. And while I am in no way close to the autumn of life, I am at a point where I’m looking for something on the stalks out in the yard.
However, while the summer has nearly ended and the time of harvest is upon us, I can find no evidence of my hard work. There are pieces scattered about that testify to my toil, but the field I’ve sweated and worked in these many long months (truly, years) looks like it has never been tilled.
Was all that hard work for nothing? Were all those hours, all the sweat spilled useless?
If I continue with the agricultural metaphor, I suppose I could say that I’m wondering if I planted in the right ground. I wonder if I chose the right crop for the soil. I wonder, even, if I had any business attempting any type of growth.
Are you, like me, looking for harvest? Has summer ended and you find that there is nothing in this season of your life to show for your long days of work? Perhaps you’ve networked, and interviewed at dozens of places but are still out of work. Maybe you have a job, but have worked long hours for a promotion that was given to someone else. Perhaps you’ve finished a degree, but you find yourself, day after day, at a job that bears no relation to what you studied. Or maybe you’ve done your best and given all you had only to find yourself impacted in the latest round of layoffs.
How do we hold on to hope of harvest when the wind is beginning to strip leaves from the trees and there seems to be nothing out in the garden that hasn’t been burned up by summer’s heat? I don’t know if there is any easy answer to that. It can feel in these times that the darkness of despair has won, and we are alone in an empty field.
But I try and remember that I am not alone. There are others who have found that summer is past. And even if there were not, the Presence of Love does not abandon us. Even if Christ seems to have no answers for my “whys” uttered in the chilling breeze, I must remember that I am not left to stand alone in it.
And, I suppose, just as Light came in the darkness of the year, there can be hope for harvest, even when it has passed.
God of every season, give us hope that what is sowed in love is never in vain.