There is a process from turning a bag of seeds into a harvest. Life is the same way and I for one find myself needing to remember this regularly. I was listening to a podcast by Ed Mylett and he described this process in life to be like an echo.
If you shout real loud you can hear an echo. The echo is delayed depending on how far the object it bounces off of is. The analogy is that there is a delay in receiving the reward of work. If you plant a seed today and hope it will produce fruit tomorrow you will be disappointed. If you have been working towards a goal or goals for one month, two months, six months, twelve months, and you still aren’t seeing what you hope to see, don’t stop. There is a delay before you hear the echo.
It’s easy to look around and see other people reap a harvest, and want those results now. You don’t always see the work and time that the harvester put in to achieve the end goal, but I assure there is always work behind a harvest.
It takes faith to believe that what you are doing now and keep doing day in and day out will pay off because there is a delay in that echo. There is a movie called Faith Like Potatoes. In this movie a farmer in South Africa plants potatoes in a season of drought. It takes faith to plant potatoes because they grow underground, so unlike corn or wheat the seed does not sprout out of the ground giving you a visual assessment. Cultivating a life of purpose can be like waiting to harvest potatoes. You can’t always see the progress, but if you continue to cultivate your purpose in life with consistent persistence you will reap a harvest.
Galatians 6:9
“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
It’s interesting that Paul said, “don’t become weary in doing good”. He’s not talking about being out of energy, he’s warning us about focusing on the lack of results and losing sight of why we are doing what we are doing. Overlook what you don’t see and put your faith in the fact that at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we don’t give up. That means rain or shine, feel like it or don’t feel like it, every step we take in the right direction gets us one step closer to the goal. With every step forward we guarantee the harvest.