Sowing in Tears

February 25, 2018

“Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. He who goes forth weeping bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.” (Psalm 126:5-6) “Let us not be wearing in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” (Galatians 6:9)

For the past twenty five or more years, there has been much talk in Evangelical Christian circles around the concept of spiritual gifts. The basic idea is that God has wired each of us a bit differently, and that discovering how he has done so will help us find our niche in the life of the Church, doing “what I was created to do.” The presence of three different lists of spiritual gifts in the New Testament tend to bolster this concept. Over the years, various “spiritual gift inventories” have been developed to assist people in discovering their particular spiritual gift. I’ve used a few of them, and found them quite helpful, especially the ones developed by the Willow Creek and the Saddleback megachurches. While there is much good in this notion of spiritual gifts, there are a few pitfalls as well, noted in particular by Bill Hybels of the Willow Creek church. In the material that accompanies their inventory, Hybels warns that serving only where one is gifted is invalidated unless one is willing to serve anywhere, gifted or not. Winston Churchill once stated that the world is run by tired old men—who might rather have retired to comfort and peace, but who are willing to respond to the demands of the hour.

Sometimes, as the old gospel song says, “there is joy in serving Jesus.” But at other times, it is simply a matter of endurance, of slogging through the mud of life and refusing to give up or give in. Like Jacob, wrestling through the night with an angel from God, refusing to quit even when he was outmatched and injured, there are times when we look at the task before us and wonder, “how can we even survive?” In a single day, I found myself bouncing like a yo-yo. It started with a wonderful time of worship at Park church, to getting to Dunkirk and realizing I didn’t have my keys, and making a mad dash home and back before the service was to begin. All this week I felt that my sermon was pretty much dead on arrival, until I actually preached it and thinking at the end that it turned out OK. 

Up, down, down, up, then down again, trying to connect with a family I’ve been working with, and beginning to sense that their interest in church and Christ is merely that—interest, but not commitment. I think it’s going to be a long road. But it is at this juncture that the Scriptures kick in. If we only sow when it’s easy, and if we allow ourselves to grow weary in well-doing, we won’t see the harvest. Farming is hard, and often discouraging work. But when after sleepless nights, long days sweltering in the sun, and fitful prayers for rain, the harvest comes, it’s all worth it. I knew when I signed on that it was not going to be a walk in the park, and that if we were going to succeed, it would be only by the grace of God. It is on that grace I depend, and in it I stand, and through it shall prevail. I am thankful tonight for having been at this long enough to know in spite of what I see, that God is working unseen in the shadows of people’s lives, and will if we do not faint, bring us to the harvest rejoicing.