"Then saith He unto His disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few" (Matthew 9:37).

As Preacher Solomon said: "To every thing there is a season . . ." (Ecclesiastes 3:1), and the autumn season is the traditional time of completing the harvesting for most crops. It has been thus ever since the conclusion of the great Flood, when God promised: "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest . . . shall not cease" (Genesis 8:22).

Today is the date of the Autumn Equinox ("equal night"), when the sun crosses the celestial equator. Significantly, autumn is also the traditional season when students start back to school and workers return to their jobs after their summer vacations. Thus the main seasons of both food harvest and soul harvest more or less coincide, and the fall season is normally the most productive season for both kinds of harvest.

It is therefore not surprising that Christ (and the Bible writers generally) often use harvest time as a symbol for gathering in spiritual fruit. Jesus lamented, however, that the fruit would not reap itself and that willing harvesters were always in short supply. "Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields," He told His disciples, "for they are white already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal" (John 4:35-36).

Sowing the seed and planting crops are also vitally important, of course, and Jesus taught "that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together" (v.36). One may sow and another reap, but it is "God that giveth the increase" (I Corinthians 3:7).

Although the fields are filled with fruit awaiting harvest, and the laborers are few, yet those who do labor in the fields can anticipate the joy to come. So, "let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not" (Galatians 6:9). HMM