The Harvest Is Plentiful
August 11
The Harvest Is Plentiful
"Then he said to his disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.'"
— Matthew 9:37-38
Today's Story
In the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, missionaries reported an extraordinary openness in Eastern Europe — decades of suppressed spiritual hunger erupting into a harvest season. Churches in Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the former Soviet republics that had survived underground for decades suddenly found themselves overwhelmed with people seeking. One missionary wrote home: 'The harvest is plentiful. I have never in my life walked into a field this ripe. But there are so few workers.' Jesus' words, which He spoke of Galilee, applied with equal force to Warsaw and Bucharest sixty years later. The harvest always has this quality: it doesn't wait for us to be ready.
Reflection
Jesus' observation about the harvest and the workers is preceded by a scene of mass need: 'large crowds' of harassed and helpless people (verse 36). He is 'moved with compassion' — his gut physically responding to the human need around Him. The harvest metaphor is urgent by nature: ripe grain must be gathered before it spoils. But Jesus' prescription is not 'work harder' — it is 'pray.' Ask the Lord of the harvest to send workers. Prayer is the first labor in the harvest field. Before you can go, you must pray. And the praying itself will often reveal where you are being sent. What would happen if the church took seriously Jesus' instruction to pray for laborers?
Today's Prayer
Lord of the harvest, the fields are ripe. I pray for workers to be sent — and I hold my own life open to be sent. Use me in the harvest wherever I am planted. Amen.
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