Todays readings.. Job 11, Micah 7, James 3&4

“A HARVEST OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IS SOWN” 

We should each ask ourselves – what am I sowing in all the ways I live my life?   What ongoing affect is what I say – and do – and write (email) having on others – day after day after day?  Never before have we each been able to so abundantly communicate with others, day after day, indeed, hour after hour!  Do we encourage each other with meaningful  messages?  Our aim must be to reap “a harvest of righteousness” – as we read today in James 3 v.18.

The words of James in his short but powerful epistle are very thought provoking, and it is good to be stirred up by these questions as we near the end of another year.  What have we done this year, what have we really achieved?  The most potent question of all is – ‘What have I achieved – in the eternal sense? 

This is the sense in ‘sowing’ for an eternal “harvest”?   It is fairly clear that James was writing in the final years of his life – and that of Jerusalem!   He tells the believers there to “purify your hearts.” Pointedly he tells them, but words which have a great promise to us as well, to “humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.”  [4 v.10] To “draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” [v.8]

The need to do this has never been greater – the world that surrounds us – threatens to suffocate us – mentally – and reading and absorbing God’s word is the only antidote!   Not just reading!  We should feel inspired to do this especially because of the wonderful “harvest” has been promised. This “harvest” James tells us, “is sown in peace by those who make peace.” see the last verse of ch. 3.

Ch. 4 starts by describing all the opposite things that are sown.  These things surround us – and threaten to influence us every day! So we need to read and meditate on God’s word every day to make sure we will have (and how soon now?) “a harvest of righteousness.”