Great God & The Strawberry Fields

It was a lazy afternoon during my families vacation in Carbondale, Illinois. My sister said, "Do you want to take the kids to go pick strawberries?"

If I'm being honest, I thought to myself that sounds like some medium-low fun. But then I also thought about how much fun it would probably be for my kids, so I agreed to go. And I'm glad I did, because as it just so happened, God was at the strawberry fields. 

We drove up to a large field of... strawberry bushes (if that's what you call them). My kids and their cousins jumped out of the cars and took off running toward the entrance. Well, everyone except my daughter, Alura, who broke her leg when she crashed an ATV earlier this week, but that's a story for another post. 

A young woman at the entrance handed baskets to all of us, with some simple instructions that concluded with pick all the red ones you can find. 

The children tore through the rows of bushes looking fervently for big red strawberries. As they found them, they would hold them up in the air and shout, "look at this one, it's huge!"

As I watched their excitement over picking strawberries, a verse popped into my head. 

"This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples." John 15:8

I continued to obseve the kids fervently picking ripe (and some unripe) strawberries, I reflected the above verse. Then very quickly, my inner voice popped the question: how have you been bearing fruit, Tim?.... Like a lot of Christians, that question brought on immediate guilt. What have I been doing to call the 'lost'? The truth is, not much. 

Plot Twist
I was bothered by my answer to that question. So when we got home from the strawberry fields, I opened my Bible to think through the issue a little more. As I read, I bumped into one of those verses that church people use all the time. 

"Then (Jesus) said, 'the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few." Matthew 9:37

What surprised me was the very next verse. It's one that people never quote.

"Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field" Matthew 9:38

It's weird how that verse never quite makes it in there when people rattle off the first one. But it certainly seems like there's a sense where God wants us to pray for people to share the gospel. Ultimately, the Bible leads us to the conclusion that God wants to send us to do His harvesting. But, in light of these verses, what if we prayed this:

God, 

Please give me one opportunity to share what Jesus has done in my life with someone who doesn't know him.   

Amen 

What do you think would happen to our communities if we all prayed a prayer like that. Imagine if one by one we began harvesting what God has prepared. We would be like my children and their cousins who picked strawberries with a feverish passion. They didn't plant those strawberries, they didn't water them, they never tended to them in any way. But they got to pick them. And they picked as many as they could.