A Time to Plant

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Keraza Magazine issue 17-18, May 3, 2019

There are seasons for planting and others for harvesting. One cannot acquire the mentality of harvesting without acquiring the mentality of planting. Harvest will not come until planting comes first. Therefore, neglecting and ignoring the seasons of planting will allow us to reap in the harvest season nothing but what has been sprouted by itself which is most probably "as the grass on the housetops, which withers before it grows up, with which the reaper does not fill his hand, nor he who binds sheaves, his arms" (Psalms 129:6-7).

There is an intermediate stage between the stages of planting and harvesting which is the stage of growth. If a seed is rushed to sprout prematurely, all its resources will be drained, and it will end up losing its ability to grow. Therefore, the season of planting appears to be a season of stillness that shows not any external sign of a valuable movement. In fact, this is the season when the grain of wheat falls into the ground and is buried within it. It is the season of death, the season of the tomb.

Resurrection is a harvest in its nature. The joy of the harvester is the joy of the resurrected, "He who continually goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him" (Psalms 126:6). But we cannot rejoice all the time as long as there is "A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance" (Ecclesiastes 3:4). In the same way, we cannot be resurrected all the time as there is a time to die and a time to be resurrected. Resurrection does not come unless death comes first, "What you sow is not made alive unless it dies" (1 Corinthians 15:36).

The mentality of harvesting is the prevailing mentality controlling many people nowadays. Nobody wants to plant. Nobody wants to die. Nobody wants to be buried. Everybody wants to reap an easy prompt harvest while holding on remaining in their own comfort zone. This mentality of the old man. As a consequence, they "reap the whirlwind. The stalk has no bud; it shall never produce meal" (Hosea 8:7). Hence, we can understand why many people complain of the turmoil of emotional void, psychological vacuum, sorrow, tension, fear, confusion, chaos, feeling insecure...etc.

The first Adam hastened the harvest by prematurely seeking knowledge and he ended up with reaping death. But, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Second Adam, submitted Himself to seasons and times, He was patient during the season of planting and chose to yield with His full will to the laws of growth along thirty years in which He seemed to be still knowing that His hour has not come yet. He did that to grant us the power to renew the mind of our inner man and to transform it from the unipolar mentality of harvesting to the bipolar mentality of planting/harvesting.

Hence, let them those among us who are suffering, tortured, saddened, fallen, unfairly treated, frustrated or persecuted doubt not. Let them deny not the resurrection but let them consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation. As they learn how to discern the seasons of the kingdom of God, let them be motivated by the apostle's saying, "Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise: 'For yet a little while, and He who is coming will come and will not tarry.'" (Hebrews 10:35-37).

Bishop Youssef
Bishop, Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United