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How We See Matters

 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 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 9:35-38)

Have you ever tried to point out a bird or other small object to someone? Or looked at an optical illusion and tried to explain to someone what you see, and they don’t? Being able to point helps, but this is the problem Jesus saw as He went through the land. The Pharisees, Sadducees, Romans, and even His disciples seemed to see the virtual people who weren’t what they wanted. When Jesus saw the crowd, He saw them as sheep without a shepherd. Not a flock of sheep, which would be the collective perceived by the others, but as sheep. He had compassion on them.

When He drew the disciples’ attention to the harvest, He told them to pray that God would send laborers into the harvest. And in my understanding of those laborers this morning, they wouldn’t go out and indiscriminately pick every grain in the field. They would pick the ones they saw that were ready.

I may be off hermeneutically, though in the Law, the Jews were told not to go back over their fields for a second harvest, but to let the poor glean. That suggests the harvesters did harvest according to what they considered ready.  And in descriptions of the gifts given by the Spirit, not everyone receives the same gift. So if you see a different harvest than “everyone else,” that may be your assigned task. Some see the unsaved as the only harvest. I tend to see either side of the harvest moment as critical. Can I plant a seed or fertilize a plant? Or, once the harvest has been gathered, can I help the person make something of the harvest?

That isn’t to say that I’m good at it – just that it’s where my vision seems to lie. That brings us back to the issue of what we see. Jesus tells us to pray that God would send laborers out into the harvest. But He also had compassion on the “sheep.” Which are they to you?   

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