October Reading from The Message
You have probably heard the sentiment of Galatians 6:9 before- “do not grow weary of doing good”. What causes us to grow weary? A lack of love for those in need? The lack of results from good work? Or maybe doing good has become boring? Paul encourages us to keep creatively planting each day for quick results are rarely the result of spiritual cultivation.
Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived.
Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.
Be very sure now, you who have been trained to a self-sufficient maturity, that you enter into a generous common life with those who have trained you, sharing all the good things that you have and experience.
Don’t be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he’ll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God’s Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life.
So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit. Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith.
Scripture Insight
The Task is Endless
Acts of giving aren’t like pebbles dropped in a pool that make a few temporary ripples and then sink to the bottom, inert. They’re seeds planted in the soil of life, and they will come up one day. The harvest is inevitable. “Don’t be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest.” Decisions are seed. Attitudes are seed. Acts are seed. Prayers are seed. Thoughts are seed. And all of it will come to harvest.
The person, though, who looks for quick results from planting seeds of well doing will be disappointed. If I want potatoes for dinner tomorrow, it will do me little good to go out tonight and plant potatoes in my garden. Long stretches of darkness and invisibility and silence separate planting from reaping. During the stretches of waiting, we must cultivate and weed and nurture and plant still other seeds. The task seems endless. There appears to be little reward and only meager appreciation. Giving is fatiguing. Why continue? Because there’s a harvest ahead. “So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good.”
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