“Plant your seed in the morning and keep busy all afternoon, for you don’t know if profit will come from one activity or another—or maybe both.”
Ecclesiastes 11:6 NLT
One morning I received a call from our lawn service guy. It was the day his team was scheduled to come cut our grass. He informed me that he thought it was going to rain that day so they’d try and come out on the following weekend to do the cut. No, I thought! Not good! He and his team had missed cutting the grass for the last couple of weeks. They’d committed to come take care of this today. Am I being too impatient, I wondered? I went outside and stared at the lawn again. Two beaver-looking critters scurried underneath the fence when they heard me approaching. A third lingered boldly, as if invited to a grassy buffet in our backyard. Nope, I am definitely not being too impatient; our lawn was in desperate need of a thorough cutting. These guys need to come out and take care of business this morning! I called our guy back and urged him to come cut the grass that very morning, before any rain hit, since it wasn’t raining yet! They came and cut the entire lawn before one raindrop fell. I wouldn’t be surprised if they also got in several other lawns before any rain fell that day because it didn’t rain until that evening! Our lawn guy thought he knew when the rain would come but he really didn’t. He was willing to put the work off just a little longer in anticipation of an outcome for which he had no control.
But, this tendency isn’t just a temptation for the lawn guy. How often do we put off doing what we know to do because of our own uncertainty of the outcome? We don’t share with others what God’s done in our life to change us for the better because we don’t know for sure what the results will be. What if we go all out and become vulnerable and nobody wants to talk with us? What if we share what He’s done in our life and nobody accepts what we’ve presented?
We’re reminded by our verse today to stay steadfast whether we know the outcome of our efforts or not. We are to keep working in what the Lord’s called us to do. We are limited by human understanding, however, God, who knows all things, has provided us directions to follow. Shouldn’t we be diligent in our obedience to the Lord?
By grace through faith,
Rita