The summer growing season is slowing down. We are still getting vegetables but not at the rate we did in June and July. Soon we will plow under the summer garden and prepare for fall planting. I love that we are able to garden through three and sometimes four seasons of the year.

This year when I was cutting the cabbage to make kraut, I was taken with how messy it was. The cabbage was wet from a recent rain and there were a few bugs because I had not dusted the cabbage after the rain. (I dislike using Seven dust.) The thought came through my mind that sometimes a harvest isn’t clean. Sometimes it is a downright mess.

On Sunday mornings before leaving for church, I pray that Father God will bring a great harvest of souls that day. That during the prior week He would have been preparing hearts to hear His Word and come to Christ. Whether they watch TV, the computer, listen to a radio or podcast…the Message of love and redemption will bring them to repentance and they will be saved.

That sounds great. But sometimes it is messy. How do we as the Bride of Christ respond:
-to the woman with five children who just had an abortion?
-to the addict who is still feeding the addiction?
-to the homeless man who isn’t working?
-to the unmarried couple living together?
-to the woman with a black eye she received from the hand of her husband?

These examples are seen easier than others but just as ugly are:
-the person who still bends or exaggerates the truth.
-the one who will not associate with the “less than”.
-those who cheat their employer by padding their expense account.
-the one who borrows their neighbor’s power equipment and never returns it.

Yet this is the harvest God brought us this day…a messy harvest.

It is the greatest joy to welcome men and women into the family of our Abba God. It takes love and work to walk alongside new converts as our Abba cleans up their life. And He will clean them from the inside out. True repentance will bring life-change.

Everyone has their own “normal”. No matter how functional or dysfunctional it may be. Loving our new born brothers and sisters can be, well, “messy”.

Can we trust our Father to make us all in the image of Christ…even if the harvest is…messy?