The waiting harvest Week 19, 2015

I was in a hurry. I seem to be in a hurry these days. My well planned and very tight schedule was coming apart. There was an operation to perform, a burial to attend, a clinic to run, banking and other transactions to make within a time limit, and the vehicle repair was not meeting up with time. Even though the baby for surgery was there on time (something that had not happened in a long time) the anaesthetist was not going to be available for another hour and half or so. “Perhaps I should just find my way to the clinic and save time” I thought as I sat on the chair changing into my outdoor footwear close to the patient’s mother who was waiting patiently.

Suddenly I remembered it had been said sometime by someone “when there is a delay in surgery it is an opportunity to bring the good news to the patient relation”. So be careful how you live. Don't live like fools, but like those who are wise. Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. Don't act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. Eph 5:15-18(NLT). For a moment I hesitated, considering putting it off. Thankfully I approached her with my socks in hand and struck a conversation. Her child was born with a hole in the lip and roof of the mouth – a cleft of the lip and palate. It was easy to draw the similarity between that and our condition as sinners. For I was born a sinner— yes, from the moment my mother conceived me. Ps 51:5(NLT). A charitable group was sponsoring the surgery with money; but Jesus paid for our own treatment with His lifeblood. It cost God plenty to get you out of that dead-end, empty-headed life you grew up in.  He paid with Christ's sacred blood, you know... 1 Peter 1:18-19(message). I told her the baby was not meant to be like this, just as we were not designed to be sinners. God would work on us by what Jesus had done to make us what we should really be. Just as she had brought this child for surgery, had she ever come to God specifically to have Him wash her of sin and do His work in her? I actually anticipated an answer in the affirmative. Instead she was silent, as though she struggled with something. “Would you like to ask Jesus now to come into your heart?” was the natural question. With tears rolling down her cheeks we prayed together, she first silently and then both of us. After the prayer I noticed the prayer chaplet on her hands; she must have been religious. I put on the remaining shoe on my foot and went instead to get some follow up literature for her which she readily received. I learned a resident was already covering the clinic for me, and alternative arrangements were on hand for the burial. I then remembered in my (rather hurried) morning devotion I had prayed for souls in the hospital to be saved. What would it have been like if I insisted on running after my programme and missed the golden opportunity laid out for me? There was no voice, nothing felt like a burden, just a silent reminder and yet God had prepared a harvest waiting to be plucked. You say, don't you, 'In four more months the harvest will begin?' Look, I tell you, open your eyes and observe that the fields are ready for harvesting now! I have sent you to harvest what you have not worked for. " Jn 4:35(ISV)