Cause and effect. Actions, consequences. Reason, result. This is pretty basic stuff. And by “basic” I mean, if you don’t understand this, your life is headed for complete, utter, unmitigated disaster -— or worse. I suspect most of us get this. We may have never studied physics, but we understand that Newton was right: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Our actions have consequences, positive or negative, and we will live with the consequences of decisions we are making today.
Just after I graduated from high school, the youth pastor of our local church left his wife and family and decided to pursue a very different lifestyle. To many, his actions appeared to come quite out of the blue; an abrupt u-turn. But those of us who had spent time with this individual could remember all too clearly the wandering eyes, the “innocent” flirtations and the crude jesting that seemed to belie the well cultivated exterior that most people saw on Sunday morning. In reality, the decisions this man made were simply the inevitable result of a hundred previous little decisions. The biblical writers, more connected with agriculture and the cycles of nature than many of us today, used the image of reaping and sowing, planting and harvesting, to make this point. After reminding the Galatians to be generous to those who were teaching them the word, Paul adds this sober warning:
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked. A person reaps what they sow” (Gal. 5:7). One of the more remarkable facts about sowing and reaping, be it literal or spiritual, is that it only takes a handful of productive seeds to produce an enormous harvest, because you not only harvest what you plant, you also harvest a lot more than you plant.
Years ago, I heard a saying that illustrates this point well: sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit reap a lifestyle; sow a lifestyle, reap a destiny. The important truth to grasp is that our destiny is not simply a matter of making a single, defining, momentous, life-altering decision. More commonly, it is the end result of a myriad of smaller decisions. Indeed, the verdict of our lives will be determined by the quiet, unseen thoughts of our heart that establish the trajectory of our actions and determine the shape of our destiny.
Another basic principle of farming is that you harvest in a different season than you plant, and only after much hard work. Paul reminds the Galatians of this very point two verses later, in 5:9: “Let us not become weary…for we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” The truth is, we may never see, in this life, the fruit of some of the seeds we’ve planted. Patience, diligence, and faithfulness are the attributes of a well-nourished soul, and a fruitful life.
